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'Building blocks' for life discovered in 3-billion-year-old organic matter on Mars

NASA researchers cannot yet say whether their discovery stems from life or a more mundane geological process on Mars.
Credit: NASA
In this handout provided by NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS This self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at the "Mojave" site, where its drill collected the mission's second taste of Mount Sharp.

The "building blocks" for life have been discovered in 3-billion-year-old organic matter on Mars, NASA scientists announced Thursday.

Researchers cannot yet say whether their discovery stems from life or a more mundane geological process. However, “we’re in a really good position to move forward looking for signs of life," said Jennifer Eigenbrode, a NASA biogeochemist and lead author of a study published Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal Science.

The findings were also remarkable, in that it showed that organic material can be preserved for billions of years on the harsh Martian surface.

The material was discovered by the Mars Curiosity rover, which has been collecting data on the Red Planet since August 2012. The organic molecules were found in Gale Crater — believed to once contain a shallow lake the size of Florida's Lake Okeechobee.

For the past six years, "the Curiosity has sifted samples of soil and ground-up rock for signs of organic molecules — the complex carbon chains that on Earth form the building blocks of life, according to Science. "Past detections have been so faint that they could be just contamination," the journal said.

Now, samples taken from two different drill sites on an ancient lakebed have yielded complex organic molecules that look strikingly similar to the goopy fossilized building
blocks of oil and gas on Earth.

The rover also discovered traces of methane on Mars.

"The detection of organic molecules and methane on Mars has far-ranging implications
in light of potential past life on Mars," said Inge Loes ten Kate, a Utrecht University scientist in an accompanying article in Science. "Curiosity has shown that Gale crater (where the material was discovered) was habitable around 3.5 billion years ago, with conditions comparable to those on the early Earth, where life evolved around that time.

"The question of whether life might have originated or existed on Mars is a lot more opportune now that we know that organic molecules were present on its surface at that time," Kate said.

The nuclear-battery-powered Curiosity rover, a $2.5 billion mobile chemistry lab, launched in 2011. NASA calls the Curiosity the "largest and most capable" rover ever to make contact with Mars.

It's about the size of a car, has a seven-foot-long arm, carries 10 science instruments, 17 cameras and a laser to "vaporize" rocks.

Contributing: The Associated Press

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