NASA bevestigt: Leven op Mars

quote:

NASA will host a media teleconference at 11 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Sept. 10, to discuss the analysis of a rock sampled by the agency’s Perseverance Mars rover last year, which is the subject of a forthcoming science paper.



The sample, called “Sapphire Canyon,” was collected in July 2024 from a set of rocky outcrops on the edges of Neretva Vallis, a river valley carved by water rushing into Jezero Crater long ago.

Audio and visuals of the call will stream on the agency’s website at:

https://www.nasa.gov/live

Participants in the teleconference include:

Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy
Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington
Lindsay Hays, Senior Scientist for Mars Exploration, Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters
Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance Project Scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California
Joel Hurowitz, planetary scientist, Stony Brook University, New York
To ask questions by phone, members of the media must RSVP no later than two hours before the start of the event to: rexana.v.vizza@jpl.nasa.gov. NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online.

Since landing in the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater in February 2021, Perseverance has collected 30 samples. The rover still has six empty sample tubes to fill, and it continues to collect detailed information about geologic targets that it hasn’t sampled by using its abrasion tool. Among the rover’s science instruments is a weather station that provides environmental information for future human missions, as well as swatches of spacesuit material so that NASA can study how it fares on Mars.

Managed for NASA by Caltech, JPL built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover on behalf of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio.

Bron: NASA

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

quote:

Op woensdag 10 september 2025 12:23 schreef RotatoR het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

quote:

Op woensdag 10 september 2025 13:22 schreef Geschiedkundige het volgende:

[..]
En dat helemaal vanaf Mars!

quote:

Op woensdag 10 september 2025 14:01 schreef Alarmonoff het volgende:
Afleiding van het Rusland gebeuren.

quote:

Op woensdag 10 september 2025 14:04 schreef Geschiedkundige het volgende:

[..]
De ruimte is nog wat onbekend zullen we maar zeggen. Zo kreeg ik deze week de vraag - toen we het over de aanstaande maansverduistering hadden - of de maan ook een zon was

Mijn driejarige gaf daarop maar het antwoord: de maan draait rondjes om de aarde en is een maan, geen zon. Andere planeten hebben ook manen. Jupiter, Neptunus dat is die donkerdere blauwe planeet toch papa? De zon is eigenlijk een ster. Een ster is rond, groot en héél heet.

Sta je dan als 30er.

quote:

Op woensdag 10 september 2025 15:40 schreef xzaz het volgende:
Ik zeg; ijswater.

quote:

Op woensdag 10 september 2025 15:47 schreef xzaz het volgende:

[..]
Niet op deze plek dacht ik alleen in 't noorden.

quote:

Op woensdag 10 september 2025 17:26 schreef 2172619626795 het volgende:
18:00

quote:

Unusual features found in rocks on Mars may be the handiwork of ancient microbial life that eked out an existence on the red planet billions of years ago.

The rocks were spotted by Nasa’s Perseverance rover as it trundled along Neretva Vallis, an ancient river valley that was carved into the landscape by water flowing into the Jezero crater in the planet’s distant past.

The rover, which touched down in Jezero crater in 2021, encountered the rocks last year as it explored an outcrop called the Bright Angel formation on the northern edge of the ancient valley.

Instruments onboard the rover detected signs of carbon-based compounds in the rocks, while images captured intriguing surface spots and nodules that are often associated with microbial life on Earth.

The unusual features may have prosaic origins in the form of chemical reactions that played out over millennia. But in a report published in Nature on Wednesday, scientists say the features should be regarded as potential signs of life.

“Our analysis leads us to conclude that the Bright Angel formation contains textures, chemical and mineral characteristics, and organic signatures that warrant consideration as ‘potential biosignatures’,” they write.

While Mars appears an arid world today, its surface is crossed and dotted with ancient river and lake beds, pointing to a warmer, wetter past. If life ever gained a foothold on the planet, traces may be found in its rocks as organic matter and possibly even fossilised organisms.

Dr Joel Hurowitz, a geochemist and planetary scientist at Stony Brook University in New York, and first author on the paper, said the unusual features on the rocks were accumulations of minerals, including an iron-phosphate mineral, vivianite, and an iron sulphide mineral, greigite.

“These minerals appear to have formed as a result of reactions between the mud of the Bright Angel formation and organic matter that is also present in that mud,” he said. The reactions appeared to have taken place shortly after the mud was deposited on the lake bed.

On Earth, reactions that combine organic matter and chemical compounds in mud to form new minerals, such as vivianite and greigite, are often driven by microbial activity. The microbes consume the organic compounds and produce the minerals as a byproduct of their metabolism.

But there are other ways to produce the minerals. “The reason … we cannot claim this is more than a potential biosignature is that there are chemical processes that can cause similar reactions in the absence of biology and we cannot rule those processes out completely on the basis of rover data alone,” Hurowitz said.

Hurowitz added: “We should be conservative and stick to the potential biosignature designation until future research and analysis on the sample collected from this geological formation can be performed on Earth.”

Meteorite NWA 16788 is displayed at Sotheby’s auction in New York<br>A handler organizes meteorite NWA 16788, the largest known piece of Mars on Earth, during the press preview of Sotheby’s Natural History auction in New York City, U.S., July 8, 2025. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
Largest piece of Mars on Earth sells for over $5m at New York auction
Read more
The researchers hope the findings will kickstart efforts in laboratories to see if the intriguing features can be recreated through biological and non-biological processes. They also want it to spur field work at sites where similar reactions may have taken place in the past. That would help scientists work out whether the features are biology at work.

Ultimately, confirmation may have to wait for Mars rocks, which have been stashed aboard Perseverance, to be brought back to Earth, but Nasa plans for such a mission are badly delayed and in doubt.

In an accompanying article, Dr Janice Bishop, a planetary scientist at the Seti Institute in California and Dr Mario Parente, an expert in remote sensing on planets at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said: “There is no evidence of microbes on Mars today, but if any had been present on ancient Mars, they too might have reduced sulfate minerals to form sulfides in such a lake at Jezero crater.”