The NASA Perseverance rover, currently on Mars, found a rock that has “leopard spots” that suggest microbial life may have once existed on the red planet.
The arrowhead-shaped rock was collected Sunday in the quarter-mile-wide Neretva Vallis, an ancient, desiccated river valley.
The rock, named “Cheyava Falls,” has carbon-based organic molecules necessary for life that can be formed both by lifeforms and by nonbiological processes, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement.
In addition, there are dozens of off-white spots ringed in black, each about the size of a millimeter. The black rings contain iron and phosphate.
“On Earth, these types of features in rocks are often associated with the fossilized record of microbes living in the subsurface,” Perseverance team astrobiologist David Flannery said.
A similar phenomenon can be seen in the Red Rock Canyon near Las Vegas, Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley told The New York Times.
The rocks there are red sandstone stained further red by rust. Within the rocks are parts that were bleached white when water containing organic compounds passed through and the rust reacted to said compounds.
“I think it’s very likely this same kind of reaction occurring in our leopard spots,” Mr. Farley said.
The rock cannot conclusively prove the past existence of life on Mars until it is studied. Getting back to Earth, however, will have to wait for another mission.
Perseverance “very likely will hand [the Cheyava Falls samples] off to a future mission that brings a rocket to the surface of Mars,” Mr. Farley told USA Today.
• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.
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