Researchers have discovered another clear indicator that life once existed on Mars.
NASA’s Curiosity rover has found evidence of boron on the red planet’s surface.
It is a key ingredient for life, and scientists say the find is a huge boost in the hunt for life.
A selfie of the NASA Curiosity rover at the Murray Buttes in Gale Crater, Mars, a location where boron was found in light-toned calcium sulfate veins, adding to the evidence life once existed on the red planet
‘Because borates may play an important role in making RNA—one of the building blocks of life—finding boron on Mars further opens the possibility that life could have once arisen on the planet,’ said Patrick Gasda, a postdoctoral researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory and lead author on the paper, said.
‘Borates are one possible bridge from simple organic molecules to RNA. Without RNA, you have no life.
‘The presence of boron tells us that, if organics were present on Mars, these chemical reactions could have occurred.’
The paper was published today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
The boron found on Mars was discovered in calcium sulfate mineral veins, by Curiosity, meaning the boron was present in Mars groundwater, and provides another indication that some of the groundwater in Gale Cater, where the rover currently is, was habitable, ranging between 0-60 degrees Celsius (32-140 degrees Fahrenheit) and with neutral-to-alkaline pH.
The boron was identified by the rover’s laser-shooting ChemCam (Chemistry and Camera) instrument, which was developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in conjunction with the French space agency.
‘We detected borates in a crater on Mars that’s 3.8 billion years old, younger than the likely formation of life on Earth,’ said Gasda.
‘Essentially, this tells us that the conditions from which life could have potentially grown may have existed on ancient Mars, independent from Earth.’
Curiosity is climbing a layered Martian mountain and finding chemical evidence of how ancient lakes and wet underground environments changed, billions of years ago, in ways that affected their potential favorability for microbial life.
As the rover has progressed uphill, compositions trend toward more clay and more boron.
These and other chemical variations can tell us about conditions under which sediments were initially deposited and about how later groundwater moving through the accumulated layers altered and transported dissolved elements, including boron.
THE 2020 INSIGHT LANDER
The new lander is equipped with two solar panels, which unfold ‘like paper fans’ for a total width of about 20 feet.
After landing, its robotic arm will inject its two main instruments into the Martian surface.
According to NASA, the stationary lander will eventually be deployed to a region near Mars’ equator. After landing, its robotic arm will inject its two main instruments into the Martian surface
These, NASA says, will become permanent fixtures in the ground.
The seismometer is sensitive enough to detect movement half the diameter of a hydrogen atom, and will record seismic waves from ‘marsquakes’ and meteor impacts.
And, a heat probe placed more than 10 feet beneath the surface will record energy coming from the planet’s deep interior.
Whether Martian life has ever existed is still unknown. No compelling evidence for it has been found.
When Curiosity landed in Mars’ Gale Crater in 2012 the mission’s main goal was to determine whether the area ever offered a habitable environment, which has since been confirmed.
The Mars 2020 rover will be equipped with an instrument called ‘SuperCam,’ developed by Los Alamos and an instrument called SHERLOC, which was developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory with significant participation by Los Alamos.
Both of these will search for signs of past life on the planet.