2023-07-12 19:35:12
Updated Wednesday, July 12, 2023 – 19:35
NASA’s Perseverance rover has discovered various organic molecules in the Jezero crater of Mars
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The Jezero crater on arid Mars would have once been a lake, and in it evidence of various organic molecules has been detectedwhich suggests that a more complex geochemical cycle could exist than previously thought.
A study published today by Nature coordinated by the California Institute of Technology (USA), has studied data from NASA’s Perseverance rover that has been traveling through Jezero for more than two years.
To better understand the presence and distribution of organic matter conserved in the planet’s surface, may provide key information about the Martian carbon cycle and the planet’s potential to host life throughout its history, the study indicates.
The investigation indicates that Perseverance, in its journey, has detected various types of organic molecules. They had previously been found in various types in Martian meteorites and in Gale Crater.
Among the possible explanations for the origin of these compounds are the interactions between water and rock, or deposits of interplanetary dust and meteorites, although biotic origins have not been ruled outsummarizes the publication.
For this finding, the SHERLOC instrumentone of those carried by the rover, which makes it possible to map and analyze the organic mineral molecules of the planet on a large scale.
The instrument detected signs of organic molecules in the ten targets it observed on the floor of the Jezero crater, north of the Martian equator and where a lake would have been some 3.7 billion years ago, a good place to look for signs of past life.
Those targets are in two crater floor formations, Maz and Stah, and organic molecule signals were more concentrated in the former than in the latter, showing diverse mineral association and spatial distribution that may be unique to each formation.
The diversity among these observations can provide information about the different Ways in which organic matter may have originated: potentially through deposition by water, or through synthesis with volcanic materials.
The authors write that “the building blocks for life may have been present” for a long period of timealong with other as yet undetected chemical species, which “could be preserved in these two potentially habitable paleodepositional environments in the Jezero Crater.”
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