NASA announced on the 10th local time that there were "potential biometrics" in a rock sample collected by the US Perseverance rover near the Jezero crater on Mars last year.
According to NASA, on July 21 last year, the Perseverance rover collected a red core sample with "leopard print" near the crater of the Jezero Mars. The sample was named "Sapphire Canyon".
NaSPA Acting Director Duffy said on the same day that after a year of research, scientists believed that "the sample may be the most obvious evidence of potential life currently found on Mars, which is very exciting."
The study was published in the academic journal Nature that day.
The project's lead researcher and professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook said, "It cannot be said that this is evidence of life on Martian. It can only be said that microbial life is one of the possible explanations, but there are other possibilities."
According to members of the scientific team, it is confirmed through analysis that the "leopard print" spots presented in the "Sapphire Canyon" sample are rich in iron phosphate and iron sulfide. On Earth, these spotted features on rocks are often associated with underground microbial fossils, which are produced when microorganisms engulf organic matter.
The project's scientific team believes that to obtain a precise conclusion, it is necessary to conduct more in-depth research on rock samples, and it is best to bring them back to the earth and conduct research with laboratory instruments.
Perseverance was launched on July 30, 2020 and landed on Mars on February 18, 2021. Its mission goals include finding signs of life that may have existed in ancient Mars. NASA originally planned to launch a "sample retrieval lander" in 2028, sending Mars samples back to Earth in the early 1930s, but the plan was postponed due to insufficient budgets and other reasons.
Source: China News Network
