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4 weeks ago
Denise Chow
Wed, September 10, 2025 at 4:01 PM UTC
1 min read
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took this selfie, made up of 62 individual images, in July 2024. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS)
A rock sample collected by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover may contain evidence of ancient microbial life, preserved for billions of years on the Red Planet.
The potential “biosignature” is not direct evidence of life itself, but rather is a leftover sign that textural features on the rock may have biological origins.
“This finding by our incredible Perseverance rover is the closest we’ve actually come to discovering ancient life on Mars,” Nicky Fox, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., said Wednesday in a news briefing.
NASA’s Perseverance rover discovered leopard spots on a reddish rock nicknamed “Cheyava Falls” in Mars’ Jezero Crater in July 2024. Scientists think the spots may indicate that, billions of years ago, the chemical reactions in this rock could have supported microbial life; other explanations are being considered. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS)
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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