Unknown organic molecules have been found on Mars by international team of space researchers who were working together with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre.
To explore more about extra-terrestrial life on Mars, NASA has sent nine orbiters and six rovers to Mars. The orbiters and rovers have photographed the planet with different types of cameras.
Recently, rovers dug down some Martian soil from the planet as samples to be analyzed.
The motto behind this task was to know more about the chemicals in the soil near the surface of Mars. But, other than this, there was a more important motive, that is to know if the soil near the surface of Mars contains organic molecules.
If it happens to be the soil contains organic molecules, then it can work as evidence of life or prior life on Mars.
To our satisfaction, the rovers have found organic molecules. But those samples are not enough to claim that those molecules were produced or used by any living being.
This is a new effort of the international team of space scientists. As the Curiosity rover has stopped drilling the surface of Mars in 2017. The scientists have started to conduct a new type of experiment has not been done by Curiosity rover.
The Curiosity rover had an amazing feature in it that was called Sample Analysis at Mars. This instrument has an array of cups that hold samples of soil of Mars as they are being tested inside the rover. The array contains 74 cups altogether. Nine of these cups hold chemicals that are used to conduct other types of experiments. But as the drill has stopped working, the NASA space scientists chose to drop soil samples into the cups which used to contain chemicals. This way the researchers has found organic molecules in the soil of Mars that has never been found in the soil of Mars before.
