The Mars probe “Perseverance” was able to detect the presence of water-modified minerals and organic compounds on the red planet.
These signs indicate that water may have flowed through the Martian terrain billions of years ago, as scientists used the planetary scientist Eva Schiller of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the SHERLOC instrument aboard the Mars probe “Perseverance”.
The instrument measures the chemical composition of rock samples from Jezero Crater, the site of an ancient lake and river bed.
The team published the findings in three papers in the journals Science and Science Advances on Wednesday.
The scientists pointed out that these results indicate that water may have seeped through these rocks. “Reactions with liquid water formed carbonates in olivine-rich igneous rocks,” they wrote in the paper.