It could be that NASA’s Perseverance rover has uncovered a breakthrough in the search for proof that life once existed on Mars. According to scientists, the robot rover has drilled into a rock nicknamed Cheyava Falls which holds the hallmarks of what could have been ancient microbial activity on the red planet.
The rock has its unique “leopard spots,” discovered on July 18, which could represent ancient chemical reactions that may have supported microbial life. David Flannery, who is part of the NASA Perseverance science team, said, “These spots are a big surprise. On Earth, these types of features in rocks are often associated with the fossilized record of microbes living in the subsurface.”
Though the research is yet preliminary, the findings thrilled scientists. “This rock is exactly the type of sample that we came to Mars to find, and we can’t wait to get it into our labs back here on Earth,” said co-investigator Briony Horgan of the Perseverance mission.
What is most interesting about Cheyava Falls rock are its white veins of calcium sulfate—indicating current water flow. Further investigation by the rover’s SHERLOC instrument revealed organic carbon-based molecules in the rock, while the PIXL instrument uncovered iron and phosphate inside leopard spots. According to Morgan Cable, a research scientist on the rover team, “We’ve never seen these three things together on Mars before.”
Additionally, hematite, the stuff that gives Mars its red color, exists between the white bands of calcium sulfate, adding even more complexity to the rock. According to Ken Farley, a project scientist with the Perseverance rover, “Cheyava Falls is the most puzzling, complex, and potentially important rock that Perseverance has investigated to date.”
Perseverance has been exploring Jezero Crater and its ancient river delta for microfossils since the rover landed on Mars in February 2021. It’s been gathering samples as it goes, with the expectation that future missions might return them to Earth for further analysis. Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, called out the importance of the finding: “This trip through the Neretva Vallis riverbed paid off as we found something we’ve never seen before, which will give our scientists so much to study.”
However, the road to proving the existence of ancient life on Mars is long and full of bumps. Last April, NASA decided that the initial blueprint for the Mars Sample Return mission could no longer be executed because of budget cuts and delays. Now it looks for creative ways to return samples to Earth by the 2030s.
The rover nevertheless keeps doing very critical work in the investigation. This discovery takes on specific importance that Horgan explained: “It shows just how important and unique our suite of samples is and just how much we could learn about the beginnings of life on Earth-like planets.”
Only by returning the samples to Earth can there be any hope of answering one of humanity’s biggest questions: whether life ever existed on Mars. Farley says, “To understand what happened in that Martian river valley at Jezero Crater billions of years ago, we would want to bring the Cheyava Falls sample back to Earth, so it can be studied with the powerful instruments available in laboratories.”
While NASA wrestles with the intricacies of sample returns from Mars, discovering Cheyava Falls makes for a timely and gripping reminder of how potentially paradigm-shifting science on the red planet really could be.