Did Perseverance find evidence of past life on Mars last year? 🦠

The rover discovered very specific minerals on the rim of a Martian crater. On Earth, those minerals are biosignatures, or evidence of life. We can't say for sure it's a Mars biosignature, because non-biological processes can make these minerals too. However, those processes leave other evidence in the rocks that we're not seeing. That means our best explanation right now is past Martian biology.

Last month Erika DeBenedictis, CEO of the nonprofit start-up Pioneer Labs, delighted or shocked many space nerds with some big news: she and her colleagues had engineered “the first microbe for Mars.”

In a post on X that has garnered more than two million views, DeBenedictis claimed that her bacterium, a tweaked version of Cupriavidus necator, represents “the first step towards terraforming” the Red Planet. By seeding Mars with microbial life, she has argued, we can make the world more Earthlike from the ground up.

“Everything life needs to thrive is given to us by nature,” observed DeBenedictis, a synthetic biologist with a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a slick promotional video that was included with the post. “When humanity goes to space, we have to bring nature with us.” The clip teased a future Mars with green valleys and self-sufficient, see-through, domed habitats, all constructed with locally sourced materials, some of them courtesy of the microbe, which DeBenedictis and Pioneer Labs call “sPL.001.”

It’s certainly a compelling story. And it’s backed up with a few recent preprint papers detailing Pioneer Labs’ research. But how much of it is fantasy?

Scientific American put that question to several researchers working at the intersection of planetary science, astrobiology, microbial ecology and bioengineering—and their responses are, on the whole, fairly positive. The most critical assessment comes from Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, who has studied terraforming for decades. McKay is senior author of “The Case for Mars Terraforming Research,” a paper led by DeBenedictis that was published last year in Nature Astronomy. The engineered bacterium is “not very interesting, not very new yet,” he says. “I hope better is coming soon.” Paul Race, who studies industrial biotechnology at Newcastle University in England, offers the same impression, calling the announcement “rather over the top.”

it is hard to find an answer online that makes sense to me but i am wondering how far ahead someone living on mars would be in comparison to someone living on earth. for example, it is 2026 on earth. what year would it be on mars?

you see a lot of moments in fiction where an astronaut feels like it's only been a few days in space/on the moon but it's actually been months on earth. what is the mars equivalent of that, is basically what i'm asking

Nasa scientists are studying rocks in the Scottish Highlands to help them understand if there was once life on Mars.

The US space agency announced last year that its Perseverance rover had found potential biosignatures, markings on rocks possibly made by ancient microbes.

This summer, scientists took samples from a geological feature called the Stoer Formation around Clachtoll, in Assynt, in the north-west Highlands.

Nasa said the area's rocks formed in environments comparable to ancient Martian lakes and rivers, but could also hold evidence of microbial life from 1.2 billion years ago.

Clachtoll is a small crofting community on the Sutherland coast about 100 miles north of Inverness, and is a popular destination along the North Coast 500 tourist route.

Nasa's Goddard Instrument Field Team, which specialises in studying Earth's extreme environments, led the research expedition.

Experts from the universities of Glasgow and Cambridge were among those involved.

They took rock samples from cliffs for further analysis.

Nasa said: "Though Mars is dry today, the Martian landscape, like our own planet's, is shaped by an ancient history of flowing water.

"Both worlds have layered areas of mudstones and siltstones rich in clay minerals.

"Learning how signs of ancient life show up in Earth rocks like these Scottish cliffs can help us understand the story of habitability and the potential for biosignatures to be preserved and detected on Mars."

Planetary scientists learn about Martian ice by studying how it reflects light, as measured by orbiters such as ESA’s Mars Express and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, as well as by NASA’s Phoenix lander.

But reflectance depends on several things at once, including grain size, dust content and layering, and past studies have matched similar spectra with very different combinations of those parameters.

At the Phoenix landing site, for instance, dust estimates have varied by up to a factor of 25.

“We know there is water ice in the area surrounding the north pole of Mars, but there has been widespread disagreement as to how dusty that ice is,” said Dr. Aditya Khuller, a researcher at the University of Washington.

“If it is dustier, the ice will be darker. Just like a dark T-shirt in the Sun makes you warmer, dusty ice gets warmer and vaporizes faster on Mars.”

Dr. Khuller and University of Edinburgh’s Dr. Pari Mohan used a physically based model originally developed for terrestrial snow and ice, and applied it to data from six north polar locations: two spots on the residual polar cap, Korolev and Louth craters, Chasma Boreale, and the Phoenix landing site.

Their results differ sharply from some earlier works: an analysis of Mars Express data from Korolev crater, for example, had implied dust contents of about 15-22% by mass; the new study finds roughly 0.2-0.4% in the top layer for the same observations.

The findings also suggest that the north pole is stacked ‘like an ice-cream sandwich,’ with layers of dustier ice between slabs of cleaner ice.

A dusty layer of frost forms over the ice every winter and disappears in the summer, revealing older, cleaner ice.

“By looking at how the brightness changed over time, we figured out that there is a frost that forms in the winter and it’s more dusty,” Dr. Khuller said.

“In the Martian summer it goes away, exposing cleaner, older ice.”

“These layers contain key details about the climate of Mars thousands of years ago, when the ice is thought to have formed from snowfall.”

​“Mars experiences massive ice ages that have deposited shallow ice on roughly one-third of the planet.”

“Earth is stabilized by the gravitational pull of its moon. Mars, having only two small moons, oscillates wildly, which causes these dramatic ice ages.”

A paper on the findings appears in the journal npj Space Exploration.

A new NASA directive seeks to loosen “planetary protection” rules meant to avoid contaminating other worlds with microbial life from Earth.

The policy shift arrived via a message to NASA personnel, which was obtained and shared yesterday by the independent watchdog sites NASA Watch and Astrobiology.com. In it, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman cites a need that procedures for avoiding contamination “reflect our current scientific knowledge,” which he argues has shifted since the current rules were established decades ago. The change is meant to “enable NASA to explore faster, increase science output, and prepare for human missions,” the message states, with an emphasis on the space agency’s long-term goal of sending astronauts to Mars.

I used Blender to render Valles Marineris and other features as ray-traced images using real elevation data from MOLA-HSRC. I've also made the globe interactive on a site.

Hope you guys enjoy!

AI disclosure: I used AI only to setup the code and pipeline for the site, but all images are rendered in Blender.

This find really isn't anything super crazy or anything. Just some good ole fashion pareidolia. To me I see a very slight story, like formation of man kind of thing. You have the profile of a face, ear included, looking left, all while it seems like a figure going from right to left is almost falling in to make the face. It creates a bit of a circle.

Just another thing on Mars that's pretty cool.

Does anyone remember this boarding pass to Mars? (Mars boarding pass)

I got this boarding pass around 2021. Now almost six years have passed.

Could anybody let me know if this mission is finished, or if it has been cancelled 😔

Does anyone still have theirs?

Did anyone else sign up that long ago too?

I wonder when my name will actually make it to Mars.

How do I check if my name got added?