Mineral capable of preserving life's signatures found on Mars: Study

Researchers, using data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, have found deposits of hydrated silica a mineral good at preserving chemical signatures of life in a crater on Red Planet where US organisation plans to land a rover next year. study, published in journal Geophysical Research Letters, ted that crater, named Jazero, contains a large delta deposit formed by ancient rivers that fed an ancient lake. 

researchers, including those from Brown University in US, used Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) instrument that flies aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and applied big data analysis methods to tease out weak spectral signature of silica deposits.

y said delta would have concentrated a wealth of material from a vast watershed, similar to deltas on Earth which are good at preserving signs of life. According to researchers, finding hydrated silica at Jezero, increases preservation potential of chemical signatures of life. y said, one of silica deposits was found on edge of delta at low elevation. 

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" material that forms bottom layer of a delta is sometimes most productive in terms of preserving biosignatures. So if you can find that bottomset layer, and that layer has a lot of silica in it, that's a double bonus," said study co-author Jack Mustard, a professor at Brown University. 

study ted that minerals may have formed in discovered region, and may represent bottom layer of delta deposit. researchers said it is also possible that minerals could have formed upstream in watershed that fed Jazero and may have been washed subsequently into crater, by volcanic activity or later episodes of water saturation in crater lake. rover should be able to isolate real source, researchers said.

"We can get amazing high-resolution ims and compositional data from orbit, but re's a limit on what we can discern in terms of how se minerals formed," Jesse Tarnas, study co-author at Brown University, said. "Given instruments on rover, however, we should be able to constrain origin of se deposits," Tarnas added.

researchers said rover will be able to perform fine-scale chemical analysis of deposits.This can provide a close-up view of how deposits are situated in relation to surrounding rock units, y said. Ar instrument aboard rover, researchers said, can look for complex organic materials. If silica deposits have high concentrations of organic compounds, it could be an intriguing find, y said.

"If se deposits present mselves in form of rocks that are big and competent eugh to drill into, y could be put into cache. This work suggests that y'd be a great sample to have," Mustard said.

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