Its Path to Discovering Organics on Mars

Earlier this week, scientists announced that Perseverance found organic molecules on Mars. Not life itself—hardly—however one other endorsement of the traditional habitat on Mars as having been appropriate for all times.

Perseverance has been trying to find biosignatures—that’s, indicators of historical life on Mars—because it landed on the Pink Planet in February 2021. However the seek for that life started years earlier than Perseverance even left Earth, with the labors of the Curiosity rover.

Curiosity launched for Mars in 2011, a decade earlier than the Perseverance rover was plopped onto the crimson Martian terrain. Inside eight months of arriving on Mars, Curiosity achieved its major goal: discovering proof of a previous setting on Mars that would have supported microbial life.

Now a decade on, Perseverance is carrying on the mantle by trying to find proof of microbial life itself. On the identical time, Curiosity is constant its investigation of historical Martian environments. Although 1000’s of miles aside, the 2 rovers’ findings are giving scientists a brand new have a look at Mars because it existed billions of years up to now.

Right here’s a glance again on the discoveries that contributed to this week’s discovering.