As the search for life on Mars intensifies with Perseverance, Curiosity and China’s Zurong rover looking for signs of ancient bacterial life, a new study indicates they will have to work harder and dig deeper. Lab experiments showed that the rovers would have to dig at least 6.6 feet to find any possible signs.
Scientists suspect that radiation from space can degrade small molecules such as amino acids relatively quickly on the surface. The discovery of amino acids on Mars can be considered a possible indication of ancient Martian life because amino acids can be made by life, and are widely used by life on Earth to manufacture proteins.
“Our results suggest that amino acids are destroyed by cosmic rays in Martian surface rocks and regolith at much faster rates than previously thought. Current Mars rover missions have reduced that by about two inches. At those depths, The addition of perchlorates and water increases the rate of amino acid destruction even further, said Alexander Pavlov, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, to completely destroy the amino acid.
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The results suggest a new search strategy for missions that are limited to sampling at shallow depths.
Like Earth’s dense atmosphere and the global magnetic field, which protects the surface from most cosmic rays, Mars also had these characteristics, but lost this protection with age. However, there is evidence that billions of years ago, liquid water remained on the surface of the Red Planet.
NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have found organic material on Mars. (file photo)
Since liquid water is essential for life, scientists are searching for evidence of ancient Martian life by examining Martian rocks for organic molecules such as amino acids.
The team mixed several types of amino acids into silica, hydrated silica, or silica and perchlorate to simulate conditions in Martian soil, and sealed the samples in test tubes under vacuum conditions to simulate thin Martian air. Gave. Some samples were kept at room temperature, the hottest temperature ever recorded on the surface of Mars, while others were cooled to the more typical minus 67 degrees Fahrenheit.
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The samples were eroded with varying levels of gamma radiation, similar to what Mars would have experienced for more than 80 million years. This is the first experiment in which amino acids have been mixed with simulated Martian soil.
While amino acids have not yet been found on Mars, they have been found in meteorites, including those on Mars.
Organic matter has been found on Mars by NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers; However, it is not a conclusive sign of life because it could have been created by non-organic chemistry.
The results of the experiment imply that it is likely that the organic material observed by these rovers has been altered by radiation over time and therefore not as it was at the time of formation.
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