Life on Mars? (Redux)

Just last week it was announced that NASA’s Perseverance rover has uncovered a Martian rock with strange textures and rich chemistry. It isn’t proof of life, but it may be the closest we’ve ever come. This makes the current threatened budget cuts to NASA even more concerning.

A rocking good story

Our story starts at Sapphire Canyon, which to me sounds disturbingly like the next fragrance Lynx might push on my teenage stepson.

In fact Sapphire Canyon was NASA’s drilling site within the Jezero Crater, once covered in an ancient lake. Looking at its surface you and I would see faint rings and dark freckles. Scientists see potential biosignatures.

On Earth, features like these can emerge when microbial life leaves its shadow in sediment.

The shapes are suggestive in and of themselves. Combined with the rock’s chemistry, they have scientists very excited.

All hail Vivian and Greig

Inside the mudstone NASA has detected minerals such as vivianite and greigite, which we should note are actually named after dudes named Vivian and Greig.

More importantly they are typically formed on Earth when organic matter reacts with iron, sulfur, and phosphorus. The rock is also rich in carbon, the backbone of all life on earth.

Put simply, the presence of these minerals suggests exactly the kind of environment where biology may have flourished.

Cool your jets space nerds

And yet, geology can be a deceptive beast. Non-biological processes can create similar patterns, leaving scientists with more questions than answers.

The rover’s onboard tools are powerful, but they lack the precision of Earth’s laboratories.

Only by bringing samples back home can researchers determine whether these Martian minerals are relics of life or echoes of other non-biological chemistry.

We may never know!

In addition to the sheer technical challenge of returning drilling samples safely from Mars the Sample Return program is under significant fiscal threat.

As detailed in a previous Nerd News, the Trump administration’s FY 2026 budget proposal called for steep cuts to NASA’s science budget, directly imperilling Sample Return.

While Congress has so far pushed back, advancing appropriations bills that restore much of NASA’s funding, the final outcome will not be decided until the FY 2026 budget is signed into law, which must happen before the new fiscal year begins on 1 October, 2025. Yup, just over a fortnight from now.

Internal moves within NASA to scale back work in anticipation of these cuts have already begun, despite congressional objections that such steps are premature and potentially unlawful.

Discovering life outside of earth has been a central pillar of scientific enquiry and human philosophizing since we first looked up and wondered ‘what the hell is going on here?’.

It is almost unfathomable to think we may have actually found proof of such life, but will leave it lying there.

Yours with fingers crossed,

Adam S