NASA Mars rover finds 'first compelling detection' of potential fossilized life on the Red Planet

NASA's Perseverance rover may have discovered evidence of past life on Mars, after spotting a  strange, speckled rock with signs of chemistry that could have supported ancient microbes.

The rover discovered the arrow-shaped rock, nicknamed Chevaya Falls, along the northern bank of Neretva Vallis, an ancient, now desiccated river that once rushed into Mars' Jezero Crater.

The rover analyzed the rock, revealing a veiny, sedimentary material crammed with organic compounds, evidence of the movement of water, and flecks of leopard-like spots from chemical reactions, which could have been used by ancient microbes for energy. 

"These spots are a big surprise," David Flannery, a member of the Perseverance Science team and an astrobiologist at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, said in a statement. "On Earth, these types of features in rocks are often associated with the fossilized record of microbes living in the subsurface."

Perseverance is a key part of NASA's $2.7 billion Mars 2020 mission. Since it arrived on Mars, the rover has been searching for signs of ancient life on the Martian surface by trundling across the 30-mile-wide (50 kilometers) Jezero crater, collecting dozens of rock samples for eventual return to Earth.

The rover found the speckled rock on a region of the Red Planet that was once warmer and wetter, meaning that any signs of ancient life would appear fossilized inside the rocks there. Scans, conducted by Perseverance's Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument, showed that the rock contained carbon-based molecules, alongside bands of reddish haematite that featured spots of iron and phosphate.

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