The interest in the study of Mars had been started from the era of Galileo Galilei as well. To study whether life existed earlier or how will be the future was the major question behind all of the researchers in this area. The stunning discovery of organic compounds by the astrobiologists of NASA’s Curiosity Rover declares that LIFE may have once existed on Mars.This is definitely a milestone in “Life On Mars” studies.
On August 7, 1996, it was an “unbelievable” day said NASA administrator Daniel Goldin gleefully. They announced that a Martian meteorite has been affirmed to show signs of life on Mars and certainly shows the presence of organic matter. From there the research spread out all over the world. Organic compounds called thiophenes are found in coal (on earth), these thiophenes were also recently discovered on Mars by the US-based space agency’s unmanned probe. This has led astrobiologist Professor of Washington State University, Dirk Schulze-Makuch to put forward their presence could be compatible with the presence of early alien life on Mars.
Most recently NASA’s Curiosity Rover finds Clues to Chilly Ancient Mars Buried in Rocks. Curiosity is the most ambitious Mars mission conducted by NASA. Its primary mission was to find out if Mars is, or was, suitable for life. The rover landed on Mars in 2012 with another objective was to learn much more about the Red Planet’s environment. Curiosity rover completed 2,000 sols on the planet in March 2018, making its way from Gale Crater to Aeolis Mons, where they got geological information embedded in the mountain’s layers on Mars. Gale Crater was successfully also found extensive evidence of past water and geological change.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
They studied the chemical composition of Mars especially on the elements carbon and oxygen and found evidence for long-lived lakes. These were the signs for the scientist to believe whether the early history of Mars allows us to expect life on Mars or organic matter help us to know the early forms of life on Earth. Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM), curiosity’s chemistry lab provided a necessary explanation to these questions. Curiosity came across several findings such as a layer of sediments in ancient lakes, chemical and mineralogical changes on martian rocks explained the climatic changes recorded on rocks. Heather Franz, a NASA’s geoscientist, he and his team extracted the gases carbon dioxide and oxygen from 13 dust and rock samples which have given the evidence for a cold ancient environment. Scientists are still working on studies based on carbon cycle on Mars. This may give us a complete story regarding the Martian climate explanation.
The next level of discussion was based regarding the deposition of the carbon. From the first drill itself, curiosity obtained sample powders contained building blocks or fundamental elements that could support life included the elements of sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon. Franz team and other geoscientist provided evidence from the SAM sample collected by Gale crater that the carbon and oxygen are found as carbonates and oxalates. We can expect scientist will get a global picture by doing analysis based on the evidence they found from the rock. Let us hope, NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover (next mission by NASA) may one day get a chance to reschedule the program as well and continue human exploration.
-DIVYA KRISHNAN
Reference
Arvidson, R.E., Ruff, S.W., Morris, R.V., Ming, D.W., Crumpler, L.S., Yen, A.S., Squyres, S.W., Sullivan, R.J., Bell, J.F., Cabrol, N.A. and Clark, B.C., 2008. Spirit Mars rover mission to the Columbia Hills, Gusev Crater: Mission overview and selected results from the Cumberland Ridge to Home Plate. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 113(E12).
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