NASA's Curiosity Rover Finds Building Block of Life in Mars
NASA's Curiosity rover made a breakthrough discovery after detecting organic matter in the soil samples taken from Mars.
During the simultaneous press conference held Thursday at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Goddard, MD and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, the scientists revealed that the organic molecules that were seen in the soil samples of the three billion-year-old mudstone in Mars' Gale crater as well as the methane detected in the planet's atmosphere offered new details about the Red Planet.
The discovery could be considered as the most captivating evidence at the moment that proves that the lakes in Mars contains carbon-based compounds that are needed for life before it became the dry planet that it is now known for.
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"We have greatly expanded our search for organic compounds, which is fundamental in the search for life," Paul Mahaffy, director of the Solar System Exploration Division at Goddard stated.
According to The Guardian, the NASA researchers still has no knowledge about how the organic matter was formed. This could mean that they might be traces of past organism, the by-products of chemical reactions with rocks, or they might have been brought to the planet by the comets of other falling space debris that crashed into the planet's surface.
But no matter where the organic matter came from, the presence of microbial life in the planet meant that it managed to survive because it has an available food source.
"We know that on Earth microorganisms eat all sorts of organics. It's a valuable food source for them," Biochemist Jennifer Eigenbrode from Goddard stated. "While we don't know the source of the material, the amazing consistency of the results makes me think we have a slam-dunk signal for organics on Mars," she added.
Eigenbrode also explained that while the discovery may not be enough to prove that life could have survived in the planet, it could be a sign that Mars could have everything that the organisms needed in order to exist in the kind of environment that the it has.
However, Eigenbrode told Space.com that the findings did not exactly provide any evidence of life that is currently living in the Red Planet. But she claimed that there is a big chance that the organics came from ancient life source that are yet to be discovered. She also said that even if life never existed, they still prove that there could still be something that were present that was used by the organisms to eat.
Because of the discovery, associate administrator Thomas Zurbuchen from NASA Headquarters' Science Mission Directorate claimed that the institute will continue to look for clues that life existed in Mars. "With these new findings, Mars is telling us to stay the course and keep searching for evidence of life. I'm confident that our ongoing and planned missions will unlock even more breathtaking discoveries on the Red Planet," Zurbuchen stated.
The car-sized Curiosity rover was launched from Cape Canaveral to explore Mars' Gale Crater on Nov. 26, 2011, and it landed on the Red Planet in August the following year.
