"Housing and living are two very different issues. You can build a house and furnish it nicely and put food in the fridge, but that doesn't mean someone lives there. "
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1; NASA Axis coach Axios
Running the news: New research finds that the NASA Mars 2020 rover will land in an area that could be the perfect place to hunt for fossilized evidence from a past life.
- The landing site – known as the Crater of Jezero – was once home to the Lakes and River Delta for billions of years.
- The rim of the crater may be rich in carbonates, which can help preserve the signs of ancient life in fossil form.
- The Mars 2020 Rover is expected to explore possible rock formations and explore the delta that once fed the lake. in the crater.
Meanwhile: Last week, NASA announced that curiosity – which Mars has discovered in the past is habitable to microbial life – has found little oxygen to Mars, but no one is quite sure where it comes from.
- The discovery adds to the mystery surrounding the possible discovery of methane on the rover, reported earlier this year.
Yes, but: Methane and oxygen may have been created through natural geological processes that have nothing to do. with life.
- Finding the origin of these molecules is extremely difficult, scientists say, without other evidence pointing to the living creatures of Mars.
- Knowing whether a methane molecule comes from a living creature or geology may involve digging an isotopic composition into it, but even then it's not a surefire way to confirm the origin of the discovery, scientists say.
- The Rover 2020 plans to cache rock samples for a possible return to Earth for a future mission, to confirm any possible life-pointing discovery.
"There is always this uncertainty when looking at Mars."
– NASA Scientist Lindsay Hays to Axios
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