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Cairo – Samia Sayed – A team of NASA scientists has suggested that Mars vehicles may have to dig deeper than initially thought to give them the best chance of finding evidence of ancient microbial life on the distant planet.
Recent research by the team has found that cosmic rays from the sun break down small molecules such as amino acids – the building blocks of life – at a much faster rate than expected, and the presence of certain amino acids is central to scientists’ quest to establish the existence of microbial life on Mars.
“Our results indicate that amino acids are damaged by cosmic rays in Martian surface rocks and regolith at much faster rates than previously thought,” said Alexander Pavlov of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Current roaming missions on Mars are about two inches (about 5 centimeters) wide, and at those depths it would only take 20 million years to completely destroy the amino acids.”
As scientists search for evidence of life on Mars billions of years ago when the planet was more like Earth, material collected from these shallow depths may not be as useful as initially thought, and Earth’s thick atmosphere and global magnetic field shields the planet from most radiation. cosmic, but Mars lost this protection billions of years ago.
During a time when the atmosphere was thicker, the Red Planet contained liquid water, and NASA said: “Since liquid water is necessary for life, scientists want to know if life appeared on Mars and look for evidence of ancient Martian life by examining Martian rocks in search of organic molecules such as amino acids.
The scientists’ findings suggest that Martian rock samples must be extracted from a depth of about 6.6 feet (2 metres), as any such evidence must remain intact.
Since NASA’s persistent rover can only dig a few inches, the development could prompt the team behind the current Mars mission to adopt a new strategy for the rover, which has been collecting rock samples on the Red Planet for the past 10 months.
An alternative solution proposed by the scientists involves extracting samples from outcrops such as microcraters that are less than 10 million years old, or from material from impacts that involve these craters.
The space agency also notes that while the amino acids are not found on Mars yet, they have been present within meteorites, including one from the Red Planet, and “We have identified several straight-chain amino acids in the Martian meteorite in Antarctica RBT 04262.” In the Analytical Astrobiology Laboratory at Goddard that we believe originated on Mars (not a contamination of Earth biology), despite the mechanism of formation of these amino acids in RBT 04262, given that meteorites From Mars typically ejected from depths of at least 3.3 feet (one meter) or more, it is possible that the amino acids in RBT 04262 are shielded from cosmic radiation.”
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which oversees the current Mars mission, has yet to respond to the results. Perseverance has already collected a number of samples for later return to Earth so that scientists can analyze the material in cutting-edge laboratories, though now the team may redirect the rover to The type of sites mentioned in the research of scientists.