【By Observer News, Xiong Chaoran】"These peculiar rocks found on Mars provide the most exciting potential signs of life so far."

According to a report by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on September 10 local time, NASA's "Perseverance" Mars rover discovered some mudstone in a dusty riverbed, which were marked with peculiar features nicknamed "leopard spots" and "poppy seeds."

Scientists believe that these features contain minerals that may have been produced by chemical reactions, possibly related to ancient Martian microorganisms. These minerals could also be formed by natural geological processes, but NASA stated during a press conference on the same day that these features might be "the clearest signs of life found on Mars so far."

The report states that the significance of this discovery is sufficient to meet NASA's definition of a "potential biosignature," meaning they are worth further study to determine if they have a biological origin.

The mudstone discovered has unique leopard-like patterns. NASA

It is reported that this study has been published in the academic journal "Nature." "We've never had such a discovery before, so I think that's really the important part," said Sanjeev Gupta, a planetary scientist at Imperial College London and one of the authors of the research paper, "The features we found in the rocks could be explained by biological or microbial processes on Earth. So we're not saying we've found life, but that it does give us a direction to follow."

"It's a bit like seeing a fossil left behind. Maybe it was an unfinished meal, or maybe that meal was excreted, and that's what we're seeing here," said Nicola Fox, deputy director of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, at the press conference.

The only way to confirm whether these minerals were produced by microorganisms is to bring the rocks back to Earth for analysis. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have proposed a Mars sample return plan, but its prospects are highly uncertain. Currently, NASA's research budget is facing significant cuts, a proposal included in President Trump's 2026 fiscal year budget, and the sample return mission is one of the projects that could be canceled.

BBC reports that today's Mars is a cold and arid desert, but evidence shows it had a thick atmosphere and water billions of years ago, making it an ideal location for searching for ancient life.

The "Perseverance" Mars rover landed on Mars in 2021 with the mission of searching for signs of life. For the past four years, it has been exploring the "Jezero Crater" area, which was once an ancient lake with a river flowing into it.

Interior view of the Jezero Crater BBC

Last year, the "Perseverance" Mars rover discovered these leopard-like rocks in the area known as the "Bright Angel Formation," located at the bottom of a canyon carved by a river. These rocks are about 3.5 billion years old and are fine-grained mudstone formed from clay.

"We almost immediately realized that some very interesting chemical reactions were taking place in these rocks, so we were very excited right away," said Joel Hurowitz from Stony Brook University, New York, who is both a member of the "Perseverance" science team and the lead author of the paper. "We believe the evidence we found indicates that a series of chemical reactions occurred in the mud deposited at the bottom of the lake—these reactions seem to be the interaction between the mud and organic matter, and these two components reacted to form new minerals," Hurowitz explained.

In similar conditions on Earth, the formation of minerals is usually driven by microorganisms. "This is one possible explanation for how these rock features formed," Hurowitz said: "It feels like the most convincing potential biosignature we've obtained so far."

Scientists also studied how these minerals could form without microorganisms and concluded that natural geological processes could also be the cause of these chemical reactions. However, they require high temperatures, and these rocks appear not to have been heated.

BBC reported that "Perseverance" has been collecting samples during its exploration of Mars, including rocks found in the "Bright Angel Formation," which are stored in containers and will be sent to the surface of Mars, waiting to be brought back to Earth.

The report also mentioned that due to the threat of budget cuts, such plans at NASA remain uncertain, but China is advancing a Mars sample return mission that could be launched in 2028.

Design drawing of the Tianwen-3 mission WeChat official account "China Science News"

Recently, Academician Hou Zengqian, chief scientist of the Tianwen-3 mission, and his collaborators published an article in "Nature Astronomy," systematically elaborating on the scientific blueprint of the Tianwen-3 Mars exploration mission. This mission, scheduled to be launched in 2028 and achieve sample return in 2031, is expected to realize a historic breakthrough of humans bringing samples back from Mars for the first time.

"We need to bring these samples back to Earth," said Gupta: "I think, for real confidence, most scientists would want to see and test these rocks with their own eyes on Earth—we consider these among our top priority samples."

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