We’ve long looked up at the stars and wondered if we were alone or if there is someone else out there in the vast expanses of space. NASA just brought us one step closer to finding a definitive answer to that question. The agency announced that the 25th rock sample collected by the Perseverance rover might contain the best evidence of past life ever discovered on Mars.
But don’t go gathering your extraterrestrial welcome wagon just yet.
Unearthed (un-Marsed?) from a river-carved rock formation called Cheyava Falls, the sample, nicknamed Sapphire Canyon, looks like…a rock. It also features mysterious black “poppy seed” dots and blotchy “leopard spots” that immediately caught the eye of researchers.
According to Joel Hurowitz, planetary scientist and lead author of the Nature study on the sample, these features suggest that some interesting, life-adjacent chemistry occurred billions of years ago.
NASA Rover Spots the Most Compelling Signs of Possible Ancient Life on Mars
Why the hype? Two words: organic compounds. Using the rover’s onboard lab gadgets, some of which have silly names like SHERLOC and PIXL, scientists detected a G-band, a kind of molecular signal that indicates the presence of an organic compound.
On Earth, these minerals often form thanks to microbes munching on organic matter. The keyword here is “often”—as in not always.
The evidence is not definitive despite how juicy it seems on its spotted, blotchy surface. For further analysis, we’ll need to bring Sapphire Canyon back to Earth, which is much easier said than done.
NASA and the European Space Agency are scrambling to fund the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, an ambitious project that wasn’t in President Trump’s proposed 2026 budget. There are hopes that Congress might dig through the cushions to find a spare $300 million to bring this rock to Earth.
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