Scientastic — 1 year ago(April 02, 2025 07:54 AM)

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/04/01/mars-rovers-perseverance-curiosity-life-red-planet/82742199007/
Perseverance finds rock covered in spheres
This image from NASA's Mars Perseverance rover, a fusion-processed SuperCam Remove Micro Imager (RMI) mosaic, shows part of the "St. Pauls Bay" target, acquired from the lower Witch Hazel Hill area of the Jezero crater rim. The image reveals hundreds of strange, spherical-shaped objects comprising the rock.
The Perseverance recently spotted a rock with a strange texture as it rolled along the rim of the Jezero Crater north of the Martian equator.
The rock, named “St. Pauls Bay” by the Perseverance mission team, appeared to be comprised of hundreds of tiny, dark-gray spheres. Some of these appeared in more elongated shapes, while others had more angular edges and a few even had tiny pinholes.
The finding was first made March 11, with NASA releasing a composite image 10 days later that the rover captured with its SuperCam Remote Micro Imager.
Martian rovers have previously spotted strange spheres before, including Curiosity and the now-defunct Opportunity. Just a few months ago, Perseverance itself even spied popcorn-like textures in sedimentary rocks in the Jezero crater.
Curiosity takes closer look at Cumberland rock
NASA's Curiosity rover drilled into this rock target, "Cumberland," during the 279th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (May 19, 2013) and collected a powdered sample of material from the rock's interior.
The Curiosity rover recently took a fresh look at a previously-collected sample that its mission team named "Cumberland" to make a new discovery. By remotely analyzing the pulverized rock within the rover's belly, scientists found the largest organic compounds on the Red Planet to date.
The finding, published March 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is thought to be the fragments of fatty acids that were preserved in the sample. Fatty acids are among the organic molecules that on Earth are chemical building blocks of life, NASA said in a news release.
Fatty acids also can be made without life, through chemical reactions triggered by certain geological processes. Regardless of the origin, the find is still a thrilling one Curiosity's team.
"Curiosity scientists had previously discovered small, simple organic molecules on Mars, but finding these larger compounds provides the first evidence that organic chemistry advanced toward the kind of complexity required for an origin of life on Mars," NASA said in a statement.