Perseverance can solely accomplish that a lot with the devices it carries, however again on Earth, scientists might examine Cheyava Falls with their largest, strongest instruments. They might be taught extra about what’s within the rock, the way it shaped, and its historical past on the floor of Mars.
Cheyava Falls is way from the one intriguing factor that Mars Pattern Return would deliver again, both. Every specimen from Mars would have the potential to inform us extra concerning the others, and collectively the gathering would paint a broader image of the planet’s previous.
A discovery, it doesn’t matter what
If scientists find yourself discovering that no a part of Cheyava Falls was produced by microbes, the invention would nonetheless increase our concepts for the way life might have begun on Mars. It will imply, for one, that the rock’s natural compounds would have shaped on their very own, with out life. Understanding that course of might trace at how widespread the elements for all times had been on early Mars.
“Even when it’s ‘simply’ a constructing block of life, a constructing block of life is fairly darn thrilling, too,” Ehlmann explains.
