NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover Detects Intriguing Organic Matter in Rock

The Mars rover Perseverance was the subject of a new NASA briefing Thursday. CNET describes it as a celebration of this year's discovery of organic matter — in June NASA for the first time measured the total amount of organic carbon in Martian rocks — and a celebration of rock samples. (Specifically, the two samples collected from mudstone rock on Wildcat Ridge in Jezero Crater.) The rover's Sherloc instrument investigated the rock. (Sherloc stands for Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals.) "In its analysis of Wildcat Ridge, the Sherloc instrument registered the most abundant organic detections on the mission to date," NASA said.

Scientists are seeing familiar signs in the analysis of Wildcat Ridge. "In the distant past, the sand, mud and salts that now make up the Wildcat Ridge sample were deposited under conditions where life could potentially have thrived," said Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley in a statement. "The fact the organic matter was found in such a sedimentary rock — known for preserving fossils of ancient life here on Earth — is important."

Perseverance isn't equipped to find definitive evidence of ancient microbial life on the red planet. "The reality is the burden of proof for establishing life on another planet is very, very high," said Farley during the press conference. For that, we need to examine Mars rocks up close and in person in Earth labs. Perseverance currently has 12 rock samples on board, including the Wildcat Ridge pieces and samples from another sedimentary delta rock called Skinner Ridge. It also collected igneous rock samples earlier in the mission that point to the impact of long-ago volcanic action in the crater. NASA is so happy with the diversity of samples collected that it's looking into dropping some of the filled tubes off on the surface soon in preparation for the future Mars Sample Return campaign.... The mission is under development. If all goes as planned, those rocks could be here by 2033 .
The hope is that in 2033, Perseverance will meet the lander "and personally deliver the samples," the article quips. But in the meantime, Perseverance "could wander up the crater rim." And there's one more update about the smaller exploration vehicle that Peseverance carried to Mars.

"Its companion Ingenuity helicopter is in good health and expected to take to the air again."

Builds on the Viking landers

[quonset]

Over a decade NASA revisited the results from the Viking landers and determined the instruments were not sensitive enough to record the presence of organic matter. However, a review of the results and subsequent experimentation showed the landers most likely did find the presence of organics on Mars [phys.org].

The most recent experiments can help clarify those results and, if we're really lucky, in another decade or so, bring back samples for further confirmation that Earth is not the only place which could sustain some form of life (that we know of).

The real surprise would be finding a fossil, no matter how small, in a rock by one of the current rovers. That would really set off the discussions about life elsewhere in the cosmos.

Organic molecules by themselves, IF

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

An instrument that detects chirality (I think that's the word for whether a molecule is left handed or right handed) could report whether it's a racemic mixture or all one way. The latter would be really hard to imagine a non-biological explanation for.

Re:

[ReadHerring]

Well, thanks to an idiotic decision on the part NASA (not JPL but the died-in-the-wool Houston manned mission people I suspect), the instrument that could have detected chirality (SAM II) was bumped in favor of the ridiculous MOXIE o2 stunt. Ugh.

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[Agripa]

The real surprise would be finding a fossil, no matter how small, in a rock by one of the current rovers. That would really set off the discussions about life elsewhere in the cosmos.

It sure would, but unfortunately fossils are incredibly rare.

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[ReadHerring]

It took, like, 2-3 billion years for life on Earth to figure out how create hard parts (the Cambrian explosion) that could easily fossilize, and Mars was not habital for anything close to that period. However stromatolites did appear on Earth fairly early as did biofilms/microbial mats....and microbial mats may have already been found on Mars, yikes

Desperate to find evidence of life

[Retired Chemist]

Every bit of evidence that might even slightly suggest the possibility of extraterrestrial life becomes a major story. There were undoubtedly lots of organic matter on earth before life arose. The basic truth is that we have no idea, how likely life is. All we know is that it happened on earth, so we are 1 for 1. The odds of life arising if the conditions were duplicated could be almost certain or one in a billion. If single celled life or something equivalent arose on Mars, it would take a miracle for the rovers to find evidence of it. The area we can search is tiny and even on earth where life has existed for a long time and is widespread, fossils are rare. Even if we found evidence, we would have to prove that is did not originale on Earth in the first place. Unless multicellular organisms are present, we will probably never know for certain, if there was ever life on Mars or not.

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[Nostalgia4Infinity]

That's because if they can claim it's a dead planet the protocols for visiting are much much easier. If there's life there they don't WANT to know it.

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[joe_frisch]

I think they desperately want to know. Spacecraft sent to mars are already sterilizaed as well as we know how so that we don't accidentally contaminate the planet. Think of the boost to the Mars exploration budget if life were discovered - it would be one of the greatest discoveries in human history.

Its exactly because it would be so momentous that they have to be careful to be extremely sure and its difficult to be sure with the types of instruments that can be carried around mars on a rover.

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[I've Got Three Cats]

Viking already found evidence of life,

Organic carbon is not synonymous with "evidence of life". This is precisely the kind of loose equivalence found in media reporting that distorts the actual scientific evidence and its valid interpretation.

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[Iamthecheese]

What's organic carbon? As for Viking probes [nationalgeographic.com], they found proof of metabolism: release of methane or CO2 which happened in normal samples but NOT in samples that had been heated to a killing temperature.

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[HanzoSpam]

I'm inclined to doubt it. At least as far as Earth is concerned, most life is dependent on other forms of life. You either have a complex biosphere, or you have nothing. My suspicion is that the same will be true of other planets. So I'm going to guess that if life isn't pervasive on a planet, it's probably non-existent.

If a planet has life on it, I think it'll probably be pretty obvious, even at a distance. If you have to mount an intensive search to find it, it's probably not there.

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[Jhon]

"You either have a complex biosphere, or you have nothing"

Are you arguing for a Devine creation, then? Toss out the idea of self replicating molecules/chemical reactions that eventually became something we would call "life"?

I'm leaning on the side of not NEEDING a "complex biosphere, or you have nothing". I would argue if the conditions exist for a "complex biosphere", the "life" will find a way to fill it. If you don't have those conditions it'll take what it can get to continue to "self replicate".

Not

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[sg_oneill]

Just so you know "Organic" does not mean "Comes from life" in chemistry, it means "Contains carbon"

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[I've Got Three Cats]

This is a very good point. While we can reasonably detect the components necessary for life, e.g., organic carbon, finding actual proof that the extant organic carbon came from life is going to be a very tough row to hoe. If Mars was once an ocean world teeming with life over its entire surface, then a probe would be more likely to find evidence in some random spot. If that's not the case, well best of luck with that.

A previous post by Beryllium Sphere(tm) about detecting Chirality in organic carbon sample

hypothetically

[dimko]

What if Sherlock gonna find literal shit on mars, what they gonna say then?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Oh, shit!" sounds like a likely candidate....

So this proves...

[gestalt_n_pepper]

1) Comets have existed for a long time.

2) Carbonaceous chondrite meteorites land on other planets.

3) Over the course of a few billion years, these two things can really smudge up an otherwise clean and tidy little planet.

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[Zorpheus]

Yes. We should keep in mind, organic matter originally present on Earth was digested by basic lifeforms billions of years ago. That's why we only have the one produced by lifeforms here. But that is not the same on other planets.

Organic matter sure, but ...

[fahrbot-bot]

Still no signs of intelligent life *anywhere* in our solar system.

sounds like a marketing gimmick

[FudRucker]

to get more funding from the guvmint

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[bussdriver]

I am just fine with the approx $8 per year in taxes going to NASA giving me hopeful news and scientific progress

Life on Mars!

[DrMrLordX]

I told them not to go! I told them not to go to Mars!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

Ingenuity

[Dan East]

This article isn't about Ingenuity, but that portion of the mission is astounding to me. It was literally just a tech demo to see if they could engineer something to fly in such a thin atmosphere, with the hopes of capturing data needed to further refine the technology to eventually produce something useful for future missions. There was a very high probability it would crash, and in fact they planned on pushing the limits until it did so. However that helicopter has done so amazingly well that it is now an active part of the mission and planning the routes the rover will take.

Ingenuity has spent almost a full hour in flight total, and has covered a distance of almost 5 miles in flight (7,187 meters). That's astounding.

Andromenda Strain...

[Morpeth]

... this doesn't end well.

Changes

[q_e_t]

I'd put the chance of this being life at a million-to-one. :)

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[ReadHerring]

I will take the Sagan approach and put the chances at 50/50. Mars had a habital environment for hundreds of millions of years, maybe more. It could have even been seeded by earth life via a meteor. Remember that all it takes is on cell. Since we have no idea or even a ballpark estimate the chances of life emerging under the right conditions, I will guess on the plus side here.

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[q_e_t]

I will take the Sagan approach and put the chances at 50/50.

I was making an H.G. Wells reference.

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[ReadHerring]

Cool point! Here is what Wells said: "The chances of anything man-like on Mars are a million to one"

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[q_e_t]

I know, it's not an exact mapping, I was just trying to make an amusing reference for humorous purposes that has now fallen very flat.