No, NASA hasn’t found life on Mars yet, but the latest discovery is intriguing
An arrowhead-shaped rock observed by the rover has chemical signatures and structures that could have been formed by ancient microbial life. To be absolutely clear, this is not irrefutable evidence of past life on Mars, when the red planet was more amenable to water-based life billions of years ago. But discovering these colored spots on this rock is darn intriguing and has Mars scientists bubbling with excitement.
"These spots are a big surprise," said David Flannery, an astrobiologist and member of the Perseverance science team from the Queensland University of Technology in Australia, in a NASA news release. "On Earth, these types of features in rocks are often associated with the fossilized record of microbes living in the subsurface."
This is a very recent discovery, and the science has not yet been peer-reviewed. The sample was collected on July 21—a mere four days ago—as the rover explored the Neretva Vallis riverbed. This valley was formed long ago when water rushed into Jezero Crater.
The science team operating Perseverance has nicknamed the rock Chevaya Falls and subjected it to multiple scans by the rover's SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals) instrument. The distinctive colorful spots, containing both iron and phosphate, are a smoking gun for certain chemical reactions—rather than microbial life itself.
