Life on Mars possible? NASA Perseverance Rover finds intriguing evidence

Is life on Mars even possible? It is one of the most barren and bleak planets. Humans, without protection, would be dead in seconds. But the prospect of life on Mars has always been an intriguing concept. However, it has remained a mystery and keeps the scientists busy in trying to find plausible evidence and answers to prove that life did once exist on it. That’s why NASA’s Perseverance rover is on the hunt for signs of ancient life on the red planet. So far, the Perseverance rover has collected several samples of organic matter from Jezero Crater. Scientists hypothesise that a river once flowed into a lake in the Jezero Crater of Mars and deposited boulders and sediments in a fan pattern billions of years ago. The best locations on Mars to look for potential evidence of prehistoric microbial life are believed to be deltas.

In a shared video by NASA’s Mars Exploration program, Rachel Kronyak, a member of the Perseverance science operations team, shared glimpses of the Martian surface in a most-detailed manner so far that consists of 2.5 billion pixels generated from 1,118 individual Mastcam-Z images.

Currently, the Perseverance rover is closely monitoring the sedimentary rocks of the river delta. These rocks, like those on Earth, were created when the regions were once covered in water and carried innumerable particles of various sizes, which eventually settled down. The Jezero crater floor was examined during the Rover's first science campaign, and there it found igneous rock, which is formed deep below from magma or as a result of volcanic activity on the surface.

More about NASA’s Perseverance mission on Mars

Launched on July 30, 2020, the key objective of NASA's Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, which means the search for signs of ancient microbial life on the red planet. The rover of the mission will distinguish the planet’s geology and past climate, which in future will pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet. Also, it will be the first mission to collect and carry the Martian rock and regolith, which include the broken rock and dust back to Earth.