MOSCOW, Jul 13Traces of organic compounds have been found on Mars for more than a year, which is not a mandatory proof of the existence of life on the Red Planet, although it is theoretically possible, said Oleg Korablev, chief researcher at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
So he commented on an article in the British scientific journal Nature, according to which NASA's Perseverance rover first discovered traces of organic compounds in the Martian crater Lake Lake.
“This is a very important contribution to the study of Mars, but this discovery should not be declared a “revolution”. Organic compounds have been detected on Mars not for the first time. The same Curiousity rover that operates in the Gale crater also detected organic matter on this planet,” Korablev said.
The scientist explained that the discovery of organic compounds «automatically» is not evidence of the existence of life on Mars, but rather that for a long period of time on this planet there were the necessary conditions for its occurrence.
«Organics can also be of non-biological origin — often it is formed as a result of the simplest chemical reactions. For example, carbon dioxide and water are irradiated with radiation or ultraviolet radiation and a lot of organic substances are formed there. These reactions have been known since the 1950s, interstellar clouds, asteroids and comet surfaces are rich in organic substances, but it would never occur to anyone to look for living organisms there,» Korablev emphasized.
Answering the question of what forms of life could hypothetically exist on Mars, the interlocutor of the agency suggested that we could talk about microorganisms that were below the depth of penetration of cosmic rays into the soil of the planet: “In principle, they could have survived to our time, but when could they arise? Not today, somewhere a billion years earlier.”
Speaking of technical innovations, testing rover Perseverance, the scientist pointed to the use of the SHERLOC spectrometer, which was first used in space.
«SHERLOC allows you to obtain a spectrum with relatively simple means — you can study both gas, and liquids, and solids, but in this case we are talking about pebbles, solids. Thanks to it, you can get spectra of those ranges that previously could only be obtained with very large spectrometers — bulky, complex, rather only in the laboratory. This «raman» was used in space for the first time,» Korablev explained.