NASA Announces Possible Sign of Ancient Life on Mars

Space

Technological Innovation Website Editorial Team - September 10, 2025

Layering, nodules, reaction fronts, and organic compound detections in studied rock on Mars. [Image: Joel A. Hurowitz et al. - 10.1038/s41586-025-09413-0]

Life on Mars?

NASA announced that the Perseverance rover , which has been exploring and studying the geology of Mars since 2021, has found a rock containing a "possible biosignature," a possible indication of ancient microbial life.

A biosignature is a sign of life, but a "possible biosignature" is a substance or structure that may have a biological origin but requires more data and additional studies before a definitive conclusion can be reached about the absence or presence of life.

The rover collected the sample from what is believed to be the dry bed of an ancient river in Jezero Crater, where Perseverance landed. The sample, taken from a rock called "Cheyava Falls" last year, was named "Sapphire Channel," and it is there that the potential biosignatures were found.

The rover's scientific instruments revealed that the formation's sedimentary rocks are composed of clay and silt, which, on Earth, are excellent preservers of past microbial life. They are also rich in organic carbon, sulfur, oxidized iron (rust), and phosphorus. But there is no such thing as "microbial fossils" in the rock.

"This is the closest we've come to discovering life on Mars," said NASA's Sean Duffy.

Food for microbes, but not the microbes

When analyzing the Cheyava Waterfall rock, which measures 1 meter by 60 centimeters, the instruments revealed what appeared to be colored spots. These spots on the rock could have been left by microbial life, if it had used the rock's raw ingredients, such as organic carbon, sulfur, and phosphorus, as an energy source.

New high-resolution images revealed a distinct pattern of minerals arranged at reaction fronts (contact points where chemical and physical reactions occur), which the team called leopard spots. The spots contain the signatures of two iron-rich minerals: vivianite (hydrated iron phosphate) and greigite (iron sulfide). Vivianite is commonly found on Earth in sediments, peat bogs, and around decaying organic matter. Similarly, certain microbial life forms on Earth can produce greigite.

The combination of these minerals, which appear to have formed by electron transfer reactions between the sediment and organic matter, is a possible fingerprint for microbial life, which would use these reactions to produce energy for its growth.

However, these minerals can also be generated abiotically, that is, without the presence of life. Therefore, there are ways to produce them without biological reactions, including sustained high temperatures, acidic conditions, and binding with organic (carbon-based) compounds. The NASA team of scientists believes that the rocks in the region show no signs of having undergone high temperatures or acidic conditions, but it is also unknown whether the carbon-based compounds present would be capable of catalyzing life-sustaining reactions at low temperatures.

So far, no sign of the hypothetical microbial life that could have fed on the compounds present in the analyzed rock has been found. In other words, we've discovered "Martian microbe food," but not Martian microbes themselves.

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