Could life have once existed on Mars, or could it still prosper there to this day?
NASA's Perseverance rover, seen here with its small helicopter Ingenuity in the background in a selfie, is collecting samples of Mars for eventual return to Earth. NASA scientist Heather Graham is an organic geochemist and research associate based at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland who studies the connections beween biotic and abiotic systems.
Graham's research has focused on the development of tools and techniques that can help us identify evidence of living systems that may have biochemistry different than life on Earth, also known as"agnostic biosignatures." for traces of life, scientists need detection methods that suppose a common heritage with life on Earth.
"And while NASA hasn't found any evidence of life now, we've found lots of evidence that Mars could have supported life in the past,” Graham explained."There are lots of pieces of evidence that sayOne of the most important lines of evidence that suggest Mars could have once supported life is the fact that the now dry and arid planet once harbored an abundance of water, a key ingredient for life.
Around 4 billion years ago the river channels in Jezero spilled over the crater walls creating a lake, also filling it with clay minerals from the surrounding area. If microbial life existed in Jezero during these wetter Martian, times signs of this life could remain in the lakebed or shoreline sediments. Thus, the signs of this past life could exist in samples of Mars rock and soil collected by Perseverance.
This illustration sows what Jezero Crater on Mars may have once looked like in the ancient past when it was covered in water. The region is a dried up delta now.
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