Has Curiosity Found Fossilized Life on Mars?
There are compelling structures in a slab of sedimentary Mars rock, but their discovery alone won't prove there was ancient life on Mars.
Time and time again, as we carefully scrutinize the amazing high-resolution imagery flowing to Earth from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, we see weird things etched in Martian rocks. Most of the time our brains are playing tricks on us. At other times, however, those familiar rocky features can be interpreted as processes that also occur on Earth.
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Now, in a paper published in the journal Astrobiology, a geobiologist has related structures photographed by Curiosity of Martian sedimentary rock with structures on Earth that are known to be created by microbial lifeforms. But just because the structures look like they've been formed by microbes on Mars, does it mean that they were?
Microbially Induced Sedimentary Structures on Mars?
The image in question was snapped by Curiosity of the Gillespie Lake outcrop situated in the Yellowknife Bay area of Gale Crater that the rover arrived at on Dec. 17, 2012, on sol 125 of its mission. It was soon realized that the Gillespie Lake rock is sedimentary sandstone, formed when Mars possessed surface water. As such, there are many likenesses between the rocks found in Yellowknife and sedimentary rocks on Earth. For example, the layering of sedimentary rock and conglomerations contained within these layers led NASA scientists to realize that Curiosity is exploring an ancient lake bed.
After 20 years of studying microbially induced sedimentary structures (MISS) on Earth, Nora Noffke of Old Dominion University in Virginia turned her attentions to Curiosity's observations of Gillespie Lake.
During Noffke's analysis of the Mars rock, striking similarities in morphological structures in Gillespie Lake and terrestrial rocks were found. Gillespie Lake, which has been dated to around 3.7 billion years old, seems to possess its own structures that could be attributed to ancient Martian microbes.
In her analysis, Noffke is keen to emphasize that she hasn't found proof of ancient Mars life, only that her hypothesis provides a compelling explanation for the formation processes behind the shapes in the surface of Mars sedimentary rock.
"All I can say is, here's my hypothesis and here's all the evidence that I have," said Noffke in an Astrobiology Magazine article, "although I do think that this evidence is a lot."
There have been countless claims pointing to evidence of ancient life on Mars, many of which have since been proven to be, at most, wishful thinking, but this new study has garnered some cautious praise from planetary scientist Chris McKay, of NASA's Ames Research Center and an associate editor of Astrobiology.
"I've seen many papers that say 'Look, here's a pile of dirt on Mars, and here's a pile of dirt on Earth. And because they look the same, the same mechanism must have made each pile on the two planets,'" said McKay.
"That's an easy argument to make, and it's typically not very convincing. However, Noffke's paper is the most carefully done analysis of the sort that I've seen, which is why it's the first of its kind published in Astrobiology."
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"In one image, I saw something that looked very familiar," said Noffke. "So I took a closer look, meaning I spent several weeks investigating certain images centimeter by centimeter, drawing sketches, and comparing them to data from terrestrial structures."
On Earth, ancient microbial mats - basically sheets of microbes that formed usually in wet environments - can be found fossilized in the surfaces of rock that used to be submerged in water. Noffke studied these fossils on Earth, from a variety of locations around the world, and matched their shape and expected morphology with the shapes on the surface of Gillespie Lake and sure enough, the similarities were there.
"At this point, all I'd like to do is point out these similarities," she added. "Further evidence must be provided to verify this hypothesis."
Unfortunately, this is a problem that continues to dog any effort to find definitive proof of life, ancient or otherwise, on Mars.
Curiosity Isn't Looking For Life Mars rover Curiosity is the most advanced machine ever sent to the surface of another world. Its mission on the Red Planet has been unprecedented, providing firm evidence that Mars was once a very wet planet. Also, the mission has detected organic chemistry in rock samples, proving that the building blocks for life do indeed exist on Mars' rusted terrain. And now, the detection of methane has added fuel to the fire, boosting speculation about methanogens (methane-producing microorganisms) that could be eking out an existence beneath the surface.
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Albeit compelling, all these lines of evidence for past and present life on Mars are just that, evidence. Curiosity's mission has never been to find life on Mars - it is there to seek out habitable environments on Mars, past and present. And this is the problem: until we send a robotic sample return mission or, preferably, land humans on Mars, we probably won't be able to definitively prove that rocky features, such as the ones that cover Gillespie Lake, were produced by microbial life.
So what can we do with the assets we currently have on Mars? Noffke suggests, that if Curiosity encounters other features that resemble fossilized microbial mats, perhaps the rover could drill into the rock and sample the dust with its on board chemical laboratory, the Sample Analysis on Mars (SAM) instrument. Alas, any biological traces will likely be long-gone, says McKay.
To find out whether these structures are indeed biological in nature, samples of rock would need to be thinly sliced and then microscopically analyzed for "specific microbial textures" - a feat well beyond Curiosity's abilities.
So although this new research will likely grab the headlines, and rightly so, we shouldn't lose sight about what this means. It is not proof of life, it is another line of evidence for the presence of ancient microbial life on Mars. And although this research is compelling, it could still just be Mars rocks tricking us into thinking the shapes are biological in origin.
Source: Astrobiology Magazine
The landscape surrounding Curiosity when the rover began to explore Yellowknife Bay in December 2012.
NASA's rover Curiosity has begun drilling operations for the third time on Mars. Currently located at a geologically interesting location nicknamed "The Kimberley," the one-ton rover also took the opportunity to photograph itself and the surrounding landscape in some stunning Martian "selfies." In this scene, Curiosity appears to be leaning its "head" -- a suite of instruments including the Chemcam (the laser "eye") and Mastcam cameras -- to the side, capturing the 5 kilometer-high Aeolis Mons (a.k.a. "Mount Sharp") on the horizon. The self portrait has been stitched together
by Discovery News' Jason Major
from a series of raw photographs (taken on sol 613, April 28, of the mission) by Curiosity's robotic arm-mounted Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) instrument.
In this scene, Curiosity appears to be concentrating hard on a rock of interest -- dubbed "Windjana" by mission scientists after a gorge in Western Australia -- that it has cleaned with its robotic arm-mounted Dust Abrasion Tool. A grey circular patch can be seen on the otherwise rusty rock's surface where the tool has scrubbed away any surface dust ready for analysis and drilling. This beautiful selfie was created
, after assembling a collection of photos from the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on sol 613 (April 28) of the mission. Curiosity's selfies not only produce some breathtaking scenes, they are also used by mission engineers to keep tabs on the condition of the rover the more time it is exposed to the harsh Martian environment.
Curiosity used its Mastcam to photograph this closeup of its Rock Abrasion Tool. The instrument spins the wire-bristle brush over rock surfaces to remove layers of dust that has accumulated.
After brushing, a grey circle of rock beneath the ruddy Mars dust is exposed for further analysis. In this photo by Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), the texture of Mars dust is obvious and fine cracks or seams in "Windjana" can be seen. "In the brushed spot, we can see that the rock is fine-grained, its true color is much grayer than the surface dust, and some portions of the rock are harder than others, creating the interesting bumpy textures,"
, Curiosity science team member, of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "All of these traits reinforce our interest in drilling here in order understand the chemistry of the fluids that bound these grains together to form the rock."
On April 29, Curiosity used its drill to bore a 2 centimeter hole into Windjana. This is only the third rock Curiosity has drilled into since landing on the red planet on Aug. 5, 2012. The grey color obviously extends deeper into the rock than just on its surface, and the powder created can provide a pristine rock sample for further analysis, helping mission scientists understand how the rock formed and under what environmental conditions.
The first two drilled rocks were located in Yellowknife Bay, approximately 4 kilometers from The Kimberley. Those rocks were determined to be mudstone slabs formed through water action and sediment, providing compelling evidence that the interior of Gale Crater used to play host to a lakebed and may have provided a habitable environment for ancient microbial life. This new drilling operation will provide more clues as to how rock formed in the region, revealing more tantalizing clues as to the past habitability of the red planet.