Mars Rover Detects Deeply Buried Organic Molecules on Martian Surface
Complex Carbon Found Right on Rock’s Surface at Ancient River Channel Outcrop
NASA’s Perseverance rover has spent five years traversing Jezero Crater looking for the chemical leftovers of whatever processes were at work on Mars billions of years ago. The rover has found organic carbon, but it has mostly been inside rocks that had to be drilled or abraded to expose it. But now, at an outcrop on the edge of an ancient river channel named Neretva Vallis, Perseverance detected complex macromolecular carbon sitting right on the rock’s surface.
‘To our knowledge, that’s the shallowest detection of organic matter on Martian surface to date,’ said Ashley E. Murphy, a researcher at the Planetary Institute in Tucson, Arizona, and lead author of the study of the rock, which was found at a site called Bright Angel.
