Analysis of minerals found by the Perseverance rover at Jezero crater suggests that they should be considered potential biosignatures. While a definitive ruling will only be possible once the samples have been retrieved and returned to Earth, this is the strongest sign we’ve had yet that microbial life once existed on Mars.
In this video Rowan Hooper and Penny Sarchet discuss the results, presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas in March and now published in Nature.
We also hear from planetary scientist Janice Bishop of the SETI Institute about what the new analysis tells us about life on Mars.
