NASA Mars Rover Picture Shows Drill Hole on Red Planet; Curiosity Makes Tantalizing Discovery

The latest NASA Mars Rover picture showed the drill hole Curiosity created on the red planet. From this drill and powdered rock, scientists discovered carbon signature on Mars.

However, it does not mean that there's life in ancient Mars.

NASA Mars Rover

The Mars Science Laboratory mission, which includes the Curiosity rover, is part of NASA's Mars Investigation Program using robotic research.

Curiosity was built to see if Mars has an appropriate environment for microscopic living forms known as microorganisms. To simplify, NASA Mars Curiosity Rover aims to determine the planet's "habitability."

To accomplish this, the rover is equipped with the largest and most advanced set of scientific instruments launched to the surface of Mars. Samples collected from the dirt and drilled from rocks will be analyzed by the rover.

The climate and geology of the world are basically "written in the rocks and soil," as evidenced by their creation, structure and chemical content. The onboard laboratory of the rover will examine rocks, soils and the surrounding geologic context to find chemical building blocks of life, such as carbon forms, on Mars.

Aside from this, it also intends to determine what the Martian environment was like in its previous years.

In relation to this, scientists recently discovered that some of the rock samples collected by the rover "are rich in a type of carbon that on Earth is associated with biological processes."

Upon posting this, numerous people expressed their opinions about images provided by the NASA Mars Rover.

Twitter user @KevClayton2 theorized that "if it's the same as we get here on Earth, and Mars was once like earth I'd say the odds are very high that life formed on mars at least once in its long history and actually if mars is a first generation planet and is alot older than earth then we could all be from mars."

Meanwhile, another Twitter user shared the publicized photos from Mars.

NASA Mars Curiosity Picture Shows Drill Hole on Red Planet

While the discovery is captivating, NASA clarified that it does not necessarily guarantee that ancient life existed on Mars.

This only means that scientists have yet to discover solid proof of ancient or current biology on the planet, including sedimentary rock formations created by ancient bacteria or a wide variety of different compounds formed by life.

Additionally, principal investigator of the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) chemistry lab aboard Curiosity Paul Mahaffy said that they are "finding things on Mars that are tantalizingly interesting, but we would really need more evidence to say we've identified life," per NASA.

Mahaffy also clarified that they are looking for the root cause of the carbon signature that they have discovered.

Moreover, Curiosity scientists provided potential theories for the carbon signals that they have discovered.

To further emphasize, the mentioned possible theories are based on carbon fingerprints on Earth. However, scientists emphasized that the two planets are different, which means they cannot base the samples collected from Earth.

Goddard astrobiologist Jennifer Eigenbrode added that "The hardest thing is letting go of Earth and letting go of that bias that we have and really trying to get into the fundamentals of the chemistry, physics and environmental processes on Mars."

Meanwhile, the other two reasons for this discovery were caused by UV light interacting with carbon dioxide gas in the Martian atmosphere, and the carbon might have been left behind after a rare situation hundreds of millions of years ago.