It’s not mandatory to be a scientist to figure out that there’s at least a theoretical chance for Mars to host some forms of life. People had been eager to land on the Red Planet for centuries, and that moment seems to become closer and closer.
According to a new study published in Nature Astronomy, organic molecules were found on Mars for the first time ever in the history of astronomy. Using a chemical mixture along with Martian dirt gathered by the Curiosity rover of NASA, molecules released from the cup containing the whole solution shocked everyone – organic molecules belonging to Mars were found.
The initial purpose wasn’t reached
Maëva Millan is a postdoctoral research fellow from the Goddard Spaceflight Center of NASA and also a lead author of the new study. You know how things often go in science: you aim to look for something specific, and you encounter something else and unexpected instead. Something similar happened in this case, as well. Millan explains, as quoted by Inverse.com:
This experiment was definitely successful,
While we haven’t found what we were looking for, biosignatures, we showed that this technique is really promising.
Plenty of scientists believe that the Red Planet was once habitable, at least for microbial life, judging by the fact that Mars once featured lakes and rivers.
Finding organic molecules doesn’t automatically mean the presence of life. Bt such molecules are considered important elements for life as we know it, so important that they could carry it in other regions of the Cosmos.
NASA’s Curiosity rover was launched ten years ago to Mars, which means that it had plenty of time to bring valuable data, which it did. This can only make us eager to find out about other findings in the near future of the rover.
