Perseverance Rover Finds Carbon-Rich Molecules in Jezero Crater Rocks, Origin Unknown

NASA’s Perseverance rover detected large, complex carbon-containing molecules on the surface of rocks in the Bright Angel formation inside Jezero crater. The rover entered the rocky outcrop near an ancient riverbed in 2024. ” Ashley Murphy at the Planetary Science Institute and colleagues used the SHERLOC instrument to identify macromolecular carbon on marked rocks and on another rock roughly 100 metres away.

The carbon was associated with carbonate and sulphate minerals. “On Earth, macromolecular carbon is often found in extremely old rocks and, in some cases, it is the only organic evidence of past microbial life,” Murphy said. Macromolecular carbon had not previously been observed on the surface of a rock in this manner on Mars, said Kyle Uckert at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Its presence within mudstones at Bright Angel was described as ubiquitous compared with other sites in the crater. Carbonate and sulphate minerals form in water-rich environments, and Jezero crater was already suspected to have held water. Lewis Dartnell at the University of Westminster noted that such compounds also occur in lifeless settings such as meteorites.

SHERLOC can confirm the compounds are carbon-rich but cannot detail their molecular structure, said Sean McMahon at the University of Edinburgh. “We would need to get the samples back to Earth to figure out if the carbon in these rocks was of biological origin,” he said. The study appears in Science Advances with DOI 10.1126/sciadv.adx0047.