spacetoday.net: NASA announces discovery of a potential biosignature of past life on Mars

Posted: Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 4:02 AM ET (0802 GMT)
NASA officials said a Mars rock sampled by the Perseverance rover offers the best evidence yet of past life on Mars, even as plans to return those samples remain in limbo. At a briefing Wednesday, agency officials and scientists discussed a newly published paper that found evidence of minerals in dark “leopard spots” spotted in a rock last year. Those minerals, they argue, could have been produced by primitive life early in the planet’s history, when the planet was warmer and wetter. However, they acknowledged there are other mechanisms for producing the minerals that do not involve biology. Perseverance is collecting samples of rocks like this intended to be brought to Earth for further study, but NASA’s 2026 budget proposal would cancel the Mars Sample Return program. NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy claimed at the briefing that the agency had found a better and faster way to bring the samples back, but did not provide any details about that alternative.