Curiosity Finds Chemical Traces on Mars That May Have Been the Results of Early Life

April 24—America’s little researcher on the surface of Mars, the rover Curiosity, has discovered the chemicals that may have been the building blocks for life on Mars at some point. Curiosity is “toodling” around in the Glen Torridon region of the Gale crater, an area which scientists believe could have supported conditions of life in an earlier phase of Mars’ development. Curiosity utilized its onboard Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM), an instrument that was built to search for compounds of carbon, in the investigation.

Curiosity used a chemical known as tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) to detect organic molecules in the sulfur-bearing clay-rich sandstone. It was able to identify organic molecules such as nitrogen and other sulfur-bearing molecules that are similar to those that helped spur life on Earth. It still remains to determine whether these were produced from inorganic matter or are the result of previous life on Mars.

“We propose that the suite of organics represents TMAH breakdown products from ancient organic macromolecular material that has been preserved in billions-of-years-old sedimentary rocks in Gale crater,” write the investigators in a paper published in the journal Nature Communications. Amy Williams, the lead investigator commented, “We iterated on molecule identifications using some of the SAM flight spare equipment to confirm our findings. I think the time was well spent, as we now have evidence that the suite of molecules broken apart by the TMAH reagent derived from more complex macromolecular carbon that is preserved in the Martian subsurface.”