{"id":577941,"date":"2026-04-01T06:11:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T06:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/577941\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T06:11:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T06:11:16","slug":"nasas-perseverance-rover-discovers-nickel-rich-rocks-in-sign-of-past-life-on-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/577941\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA’s Perseverance rover discovers nickel-rich rocks in sign of past life on Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"

A tiny find inside some three-billion-year-old rocks by NASA’s Perseverance rover<\/a> is adding to a growing body of evidence that life once existed on Mars<\/a>.The Perseverance rover made its way through Neretva Vallis – an ancient river channel that once carried water into a lake in a Martian crater<\/a> – in 2024.<\/p>\n

The rockbed is believed to be more than three billion years old.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/This image provided by NASA shows NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover taking a selfie, made up of 62 individual images on July 23, 2024. (NASA via AP) (AP)<\/p>\n

\ufeffUsing laser, infrared and X-ray technologies, Perseverance examined 126 sedimentary rocks and eight rock surfaces on Neretva Vallis.<\/p>\n

A team of researchers led by Henry Manelski from Purdue University in the United States<\/a> say among the discoveries was a large number of \ufeffnickel-rich rocks with a similar chemical composition and shape of the iron sulfide arrangements to pyrite – sedimentary rocks found on Earth.<\/p>\n

This is signi\ufeffficant because previous research has found that pyrite is primarily formed by chemical reactions from living microbes.<\/p>\n

Even if the nickel-rich rocks were not produced by microbial \ufefflifeforms, it is another point of evidence suggesting that Mars was once conducive to life.<\/p>\n

Nickel is an essential component of enzymes in many ancient \ufefflifeforms, including archaea and bacterial species.<\/p>\n

The find adds to a growing body of evidence that life could have once existed on the Martian planet.<\/p>\n

It’s not the first discovery that Perseverance has \ufeffmade on the topic.<\/p>\n

\ufeffIn 2024, the rover discovered rocky “leopard spots” in the Jezero crater, indicative of ancient microbial chemical reactions.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/This NASA image shows leopard spots on a reddish rock nicknamed Cheyava Falls in the Jezero Crater discovered by NASAs Perseverance rover in July 2024. (AP)<\/p>\n

NASA’s acting administrator Sean Duffy called that find “the closest we have ever come to discovering life on Mars”.<\/p>\n

“The identification of a potential biosignature on the Red Planet is a groundbreaking discovery, and one that will advance our understanding of Mars,” he said at the time.<\/p>\n

NEVER MISS A STORY: Get your breaking news and exclusive stories first by following us across all platforms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A tiny find inside some three-billion-year-old rocks by NASA’s Perseverance rover is adding to a growing body of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":["post-577941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}