When David Arge Klevang first saw the first images of the red rock on Mars, he intuitively knew Perseverance had found something special. The leopard spots on the rock were something researchers had never seen before. On Earth, such spots are often signs that microorganisms have been present – signs of biological life.
This was the entire purpose for David Arge Klevang and his colleagues at NASA when they sent the rover Perseverance to Mars with equipment from DTU. After the discovery, they began pointing Perseverance's lasers, cameras and X-rays at the rock from every possible angle, and hour after hour, day after day, more and more data started coming in, all pointing in the same direction. Life on Mars.
"It's absolutely crazy," says David Arge Klevang, an associate professor at DTU Space who helped develop the PIXL instrument on Perseverance.
"During the mission, we've gotten some pretty promising measurements, but nothing as eye-catching as this. It's the closest we've come to tangible evidence that there once was life on Mars," he says.
Range of measurements pointing in the same direction
What makes the leopard-spotted rock, named Cheyava Falls, interesting is that it contains three elements not previously found together on Mars. Firstly, calcium sulfate is found in the rock, indicating that water once ran through it. Secondly, the leopard spots contain iron and phosphate, which could be the result of a chemical reaction that could have provided an energy source for microorganisms. In addition, the SHERLOC instrument also measured organic matter, which could be a sign of biological life.
"What's so interesting about this is that it's a whole range of measurements that point towards something of biological origin," says David Arge Klevang.
The rock was found in the mouth of the Jezero crater, which 3.5 billion years ago is believed to have been a lake and therefore once held water, which is necessary for life.
