Yes, there really could have been life on Mars

NASA has discovered the building blocks for life on Mars, meaning the planet may once have been habitable. The space agency’s Curiosity Rover helped identify an abundance of organic matter typically associated with life on Earth.

While the mission fell short of detecting life itself, Nasa said the discovery was ‘fundamental’ to its search for historic living organisms on the planet.

Announcing their findings yesterday afternoon, Nasa said the organic molecules were found in rocks from an ancient lake bed.

The rover extracted and heated samples from Mojave and Confidence Hills in the Gale Crater – both of which contain mudstones dating back roughly three billion years.

This revealed the presence of molecules similar to organic-rich sedimentary rock found on Earth. The study’s lead author Dr Jennifer L. Eigenbrode said: ‘Those organic molecules could have come from life, but we don’t know that there was ever life on Mars. So those molecules are not evidence of life.

‘What we’re looking at here are a lot of layers that were put down in an ancient lake. That lake had been there for a long periods of time – hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of years.’

Dr Eigenbrode said the Mars molecules differ by a single carbon side chain from those on Earth, suggesting they may be fragments of larger organic molecules.

She added that the findings offered a hopeful precursor to future missions to dig even deeper into the Martian soil and a ‘good sign’ of the planet’s ancient habitability.