Just when you thought the Australian outback couldn’t possibly be better, it turns out it could be the key to finding out if there was life on Mars. Who would have thought our red dirt country could hold the secret to the red planet?
The Pilbara may have the clues
Turns out, The Pilbara is home to rocks that contain the oldest evidence of life on Earth. These rocks are a whopping 3.5 billion years old, which is a similar age to rocks found on Mars. NASA’s rover, Perseverance, is searching for similarities between the two, to determine whether or not biology took hold on Mars. According to the research team, only ancient microbes could have shaped the rocks to be the way they are.
Mars 2020 launched 2 years ago
NASA’s mission, Mars 2020, was launched from Earth on the 30th of July 2020. Confirmation of the touchdown was then received on the 18th of February 2021. As of 23 November 2022, Perseverance (the rover) and Ingenuity (the robotic coaxial helicopter) have been on Mars for a total of 643 days. The aim of this mission is to search for signs of past habitable conditions and evidence of past microbial life and water. Essentially, whether there was once life on Mars.
Professor Caroline Smith, head of the Earth science collections at the NHM, said that they’d be using what they’ve learnt from our country, to steer some of the rover’s investigations. Thanks to the Pilbara, they’ve got a baseline on what to look for with biological signatures.
