Although this does not mean detecting signs of life on Mars, it is still very interesting.
NASA's Perseverance Mars probe discovered the essential elements of life.
Team members claim that by examining the composition of the surface stones of Jezero Crater, Perseverance discovered carbon-containing organic matter in some of the stones.
To clarify: this does not mean that signs of life on Mars have been detected. Organic matter can be produced by both biological and abiotic means, so further analysis of the formation of compounds in Jezero Crater is still needed.
Perseverance won't do all the work alone, and the samples it collects will be shipped back to Earth in a joint U.S.-European Space Agency operation, possibly as early as 2031.
Luther of nasa's Southern California Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In a statement, Beagle said: "Although the problem needs to wait until the samples are sent back to Earth to solve this problem, the process of organic matter preservation is also very exciting. ”
"When these samples are shipped back to Earth, they will be a resource for scientific research and discovery for a long time." Beagle, principal investigator of perseverance's "SHERLOC" instrument, which uses Raman spectroscopy to probe environments suitable for the survival of organic compounds, added.
The car-sized Perseverance landed last February at the 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer) Jezero Crater, a vast river delta that in ancient times.
Officials at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement that Perseverance had two mission objectives: to look for signs of ancient life on Mars and to obtain the first Martian sample of material in human history and ship it back to Earth. With regard to the latter objective, as of now, 6 of the 43 sample tubes carried by perseverance have been filled with samples and sealed. Four of the tubes contained important rock samples, one contained a Sample of the Martian Atmosphere, and the other contained detection materials to help team members monitor contaminated compounds that Perseverance might bring from Earth.
After landing on Mars, Perseverance spent several months examining its equipment and systems while assisting the Witty Helicopter in its groundbreaking mission. The helicopter landed on Mars with Perseverance. In early June, Perseverance began its scientific missions and has made great progress since then.
Mission team members unveiled the discovery of organic matter on Mars at the American Geographic Alliance's Fall Conference in New Orleans.
In a statement released Wednesday, officials at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said SHERLOC detected organics inside some of the stones scraped by the Perseverance drill and also in dust on the surface of the non-drilled scraped stones.
Beagle said: "Curiosity also found organic matter in its landing area, Gaelic Crater. The Curiosity probe, launched by NASA in August 2012, is now exploring the 96-mile (154-kilometer) wide Gale crater.
He added: "The SHERLOC device is able to map the spatial distribution of organic matter within the stone block and link it to minerals found nearby. This will help us understand the environment in which these organic matter are formed. ”
The image shows Perseverance from the orbital and subsurface perspectives from the "Seta" area from its entry into Jezero Crater, respectively. The image below is a "radar map" of the underground taken by the detector RIMAX equipment; the red line shows that the underground characteristics are linked to the erosion-resistant rocks that are exposed to the surface.
Photo: NASA's Perseverance probe on Mars
The Perseverance probe confirms the existence of Mars' ancient river delta
Mars samples will be shipped back to Earth in 2031: What will NASA and Europe do with these samples?
Of course, the mission also includes the detection of ancient volcanic activity.
Mission team members said at a press conference on Wednesday that Perseverance also featured another device, PIXL (a planetary instrument for detecting rock chemicals through X-rays), which provides clearer observations of paleoenvironmental samples. By analyzing a small piece of rock in the Seta region south of Jezero Crater, PIXL found a large number of conjugates of olivine crystals with pyroxene crystals.
Ken Ken, a project scientist at the Perseverance Project at the Technical Institute of Pasadena, California. "Students with knowledge of geography will know that this crystal is formed and solidified when a rock is in slowly cooling magma, for example, a thick lava flow, lava lake or magma reservoir," Farley said in the statement. ”
Later, the repeated erosions of the water changed the nature of the rock, making this rock an important treasure for future scientists to explore the deeds of Jezero Crater. Scientists can also use this rock to gain a deeper understanding of what kind of water was prevalent on the surface of the crater, revealing the early history of Mars. "We're going to pick out a lot of useful material from Martian samples that are being carried back to Earth." ”
Farley and his colleagues have long wondered whether the bedrock of Jezero Crater is volcanic or sedimentary (for example, made up of sedimentary material from ancient rivers). Now, they seem to be on the verge of knowing the answer. Nevertheless, many issues remain to be resolved. For example, is this lava block part of a lava lake on the surface of the crater? Or is it possible that it formed in underground magma reservoirs and was only eroded after the magma eruption?
Perseverance will answer these puzzles and other questions that arise during long-term exploration.
Some of the exploration perspective will extend to the subsurface areas of Mars. Also on Wednesday, the mission team released perseverance's first "radar map." Its ground-penetrating radar detected a depth of 33 feet (10 meters) underground and produced this picture.
"Perseverance's ability to observe geographic and even subsurface features gives the team a new dimension in mapping Mars." Officials at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement.
BY: Mike Wall
FY: Autumn
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