DISCOVERIES

Perseverance has discovered the largest cache of organic material ever found on the Red Planet.

MARS: PERSEVERANCE ROVER DISCOVERS MORE ORGANIC MATERIAL ON MARS THAN EVER BEFORE

The rover collected samples from an area where scientists think life could have thrived on ancient Mars

As part of its continuing exploration of an ancient Martian riverbed, NASA's Perseverance rover has collected some of the most promising samples yet in its ongoing search for signs of life on the Red Planet. Among them are several samples of sandstone and mudstone, collected from a one-meter-wide rocky outcrop named Wildcat Ridge that is packed with organic compounds - chemicals essential for life on Earth.

Perseverance has been trundling around an area known as the Jezero Crater since September 2021 and has so far collected 12 samples of rock.

All of the samples it collects over its two-year mission are scheduled to be brought back to Earth for analysis in 2033 as part of the Mars Sample Return mission.

The Jezero Crater lies just north of the Martian equator. It is 45km wide and home to an ancient fan-shaped delta that formed about 3.5 billion years ago when rivers spilled over the crater walls and created a lake.

"We picked the Jezero Crater for Perseverance to explore because we thought it had the best chance of providing scientifically excellent samples - and now we know we sent the rover to the right location," said Dr Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for science in Washington.

A preliminary analysis of the Wildcat Ridge samples was carried out by an instrument onboard Perseverance called Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals, or SHERLOC.