The rover Perseverance, which Nasa launched to Mars this summer, will search for signs of past life in an ancient crater lake. But if life did exist on the Red Planet, how would scientists recognize it? One of the scientists leading the project, Ken Williford, explained what they were looking for.
Today, Mars is dangerous for life. The climate is too cold for water to remain liquid on the surface, and the thin atmosphere emits high levels of radiation, potentially sterilizing topsoil.
But it’s not always like this. About 3.5 billion years ago or so, water flowed on the surface. He carved a channel that is still visible today and collects in the crater. An atmosphere with thicker carbon dioxide (CO2) blocks out much of the harmful radiation.
Water is the most common element in biology, so it seems plausible that ancient Mars once offered conditions suitable for life.
In the 1970s, the Viking mission carried out experiments to search for microbes in Martian soil. But the results are considered inconclusive.
Previous missions have found evidence that Mars may have been able to support life billions of years ago.
In the early 2000s, Nasa’s Mars rover was commissioned to “follow the waterway”. Opportunity and Spirit found a wealth of geological evidence indicating the presence of liquid water in the past.
The Curiosity rover, which landed in 2012, discovered that the lake that once filled Gale Crater – where it landed – could support life. It also detects organic (carbon-containing) molecules that serve as the building blocks of life.
Now, the Perseverance robot will explore the same environment with instruments designed to test for biological markers.
“This is arguably the first Nasa mission since Vikings,” said Ken Williford, deputy project scientist for this mission, of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
“Vikings are looking for life that might still exist on Mars today. NASA’s most recent approach is to explore ancient environments because the data we have suggests that, according to the planet’s early history, Mars could have supported life for its first few billion years.”
Perseverance will head towards Jezero Crater, where signs of past water are much clearer, when viewed from orbit, than at Gale Crater.
The robot will drill into the Martian rock, extracting the core of the aid, which is then placed and sealed in a container and left on the surface.
The sample will be picked up by another rover, sent at a later date, then launched into Mars orbit and sent to Earth for analysis. All of this is part of a collaborative program with the European Space Agency (Esa) called Mars Sample Return.
But the robot rover will also be doing a lot of research on the surface of the Red Planet.
Jezero has one of the best examples of deltas on Mars. Deltas are layered structures that form when rivers enter open water and deposit rock, sand, and – possibly – organic carbon.
“There’s a river channel running from the west, through the crater rim; and then right inside the crater, at the river mouth, there’s a pretty delta fan exposed. Our plan was to land right in front of the delta and start exploring,” said Dr Williford.
The delta contains grains of sand originating from rocks upstream, including watersheds in the northwest.
“The cement between the grains is very interesting. It records the history of the water interacting with the sand during the formation of the delta in the lake,” said Ken Williford.
“This can be a habitat for organisms that live among the grains of sand. Pieces of organic matter from any organisms upstream can be carried here.”
Jezero is located in an area that scientists have been observing for a long time. It lies on the western shoulder of a giant basin called Isidis, which shows the strongest signs of olivine and carbonate minerals on Mars, based on measurements from space.
“Mineral carbonates were one of the main targets that drove us to explore this region,” said Ken Williford.
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