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The best potential evidence for extraterrestrial life yet

    • NASA's Perseverance rover may have found evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars.

    • Scientists have yet to return the rock to Earth for further study, but three key features make it promising.

    • The discovery is a major victory for NASA, after a series of budget cuts and setbacks to the mission.

    NASA has found a piece of rock on Mars that could one day be the first clear evidence of extraterrestrial life.

    To be clear, NASA is not declaring that it has discovered life on Mars. Instead, the Perseverance rover has drilled down a sample of a rock with properties that could be from ancient microbial activity, the agency announced Thursday.

    To confirm their suspicions, scientists must bring the rock sample back to Earth and study it more closely.

    “This is exactly the kind of sample we wanted to find,” Katie Stack Morgan, one of the Perseverance mission's principal scientists, told Business Insider.

    3 Key Features That Could Indicate Alien Life

    reddish rock on Mars with a borehole surrounded by soil next to a speck of white dustreddish rock on Mars with a borehole surrounded by soil next to a speck of white dust

    “Cheyava Falls” (left) shows the dark hole where NASA's Perseverance took a core sample. The white spot right next to the hole is where the rover scoured the rock to examine its composition.NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

    The rock, nicknamed Cheyava Falls, has three main features:

    • First, the white veins of calcium sulfate are clear evidence that water once flowed through it.

    • Second, the rock tested positive for organic compounds, the carbon-based building blocks of life as we know it.

    • Third, it is dotted with tiny “leopard spots” that indicate chemical reactions associated with microbial life here on Earth.

    rocky martian soil with red stripe in the middle dotted with broken white leopard spots with black outlinesrocky martian soil with red stripe in the middle dotted with broken white leopard spots with black outlines

    A reddish rock on Mars, nicknamed “Cheyava Falls,” contains leopard spots that could indicate ancient microbial life.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

    However, both the organic material and the leopard spots could have come from non-biological processes, so scientists would need to study the sample more closely on Earth to know for sure.

    The rover has reached the limit of what it can learn about the rock.

    “We're not saying there's life on Mars, but we do see something that's an interesting potential biosignature,” Stack Morgan said.

    A biosignature is a characteristic that indicates the presence of life.

    “This is a very important discovery,” she added.

    It's a much-needed victory for the space agency, which has suffered blow after blow in recent months due to budget cuts and technical failures in missions.

    NASA needs this win

    Earlier this year, the agency’s first attempt to return to the moon since 1972 failed. The NASA-funded Peregrine lunar mission, by the company Astrobotic, suffered a fuel leak shortly after launch, forcing it to return to Earth and burn up in the atmosphere. (The next attempt, a mission by the company Intuitive Machines, also funded by NASA, landed successfully on the moon.)

    Then came new budget decisions. NASA’s 2025 budget proposal effectively defunds the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which is still a very productive and functional mission.

    And just last week, NASA officials announced they were scrapping the VIPER lunar rover, which the agency had already spent $450 million building. NASA plans to disassemble it and reuse some of its parts for future lunar missions.

    Meanwhile, two astronauts have been stuck on the International Space Station for 51 days because the NASA-funded Boeing spacecraft that took them there is leaking helium and has engine failures.

    Even Perseverance wasn’t spared. In April, NASA announced that it was canceling its $11 billion plan to send a follow-up mission, called Mars Sample Return, to collect the rover’s tubes of Martian rock and bring them back to Earth. That was the plan that could have brought scientists the Cheyava Falls rock sample.

    Instead, NASA is companies are asking for intervention and propose their own cheaper, faster versions of the mission.

    mosaic of photos of lightsaber-like monster tubes on the Martian surfacemosaic of photos of lightsaber-like monster tubes on the Martian surface

    These are not lightsabers, but Perseverance's sample tubes, hidden on the Martian surface.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

    The Cheyava Falls Rock special needs additional study.

    “This rock is also one of the most complex rocks we've seen on the surface of Mars. There's a lot going on in this rock,” Stack Morgan said.

    IAre They Aliens? Check the CoLD Scale

    For now, this discovery is just the first step on the seven-step scale of “confidence in detection of life” (CoLD).

    The CoLD scale is a rough estimate of scientific confidence in the possible discovery of extraterrestrial life.

    illustration of a line of scientists in white lab coats building a tall stepped wall of green bricks with the numbers 1 through 7 running up the sides, indicating the stages of confirming evidence of extraterrestrial life. the illustration is labeled "COLD BOWL"illustration of a line of scientists in white lab coats building a tall stepped wall of green bricks with the numbers 1 through 7 running up the sides, indicating the stages of confirming evidence of extraterrestrial life. the illustration is labeled "COLD BOWL"

    The Confidence of Life Detection (CoLD) scale allows scientists to investigate whether a signal could indicate life.NASA/Aaron Gronstal

    “We've reached the beginning of that scale and I think that's what the rover was sent to Mars for,” Stack Morgan said.

    A potential biosignature can move to higher levels of confidence as the evidence mounts. For example, if scientists can confirm that known nonbiological processes did not create the leopard spots, the Cheyava Falls rock might move to step two or three.

    But first they have to get the sample to Earth. And NASA has to figure out how to do that.

    “We hope that our latest sample can contribute to the conversation about whether this effort is worthwhile,” Stack Morgan said. “And we believe it is.”

    Read the original article on Business Insider