NASA recently made a groundbreaking discovery indicating the presence of life on Mars. Dean Duffy, the newly appointed NASA administrator, revealed that a sample named “Sapphire Canyon,” collected by the Perseverance rover at a rocky outcrop site in Neretva Vallis, provides the strongest evidence yet of Martian life.
This significant finding, shared by NASA officials, suggests that Mars may have supported life in the past. The Perseverance rover, which touched down on Mars in 2021, has been investigating the Jezero Crater, once a location of a prehistoric lake in the planet’s northern hemisphere.
The samples retrieved from a former river delta, among which 38 were for sample collection and five were “witness tubes” for system cleanliness documentation, are considered invaluable by NASA. The rover’s primary goal is to search for signs of ancient microbial life and gather core samples of Martian rock and regolith for potential future missions to bring back to Earth for detailed analysis.
Through images sent back to Earth, the rover has depicted remnants of crystalline solids from Mars’ ancient water flows. Scientists, after 30 years of research, confirmed the discovery of life traces on Mars, with peer-reviewed findings hinting at a biological origin for the samples.
During a presentation, scientist Joel Hurowitz pointed out small signs in the crater indicative of past Martian life, believed to have existed billions of years ago.
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