'We’ve gone farther than any mission'

'We've gone farther than any mission'

UC helps NASA find tantalizing evidence of ancient life on Mars

Samuel Hall didn't expect to be an interplanetary explorer when he enrolled in grad school at the University of Cincinnati.

But UC Professor Andy Czaja invited him to take part in NASA's Mars Exploration Program, which is using the Perseverance rover to look for evidence of ancient life on the red planet.

And on Wednesday NASA said they might have found it.

"I've always been obsessed with astronomy and space exploration, so getting to be even a small part of a NASA mission is super cool," Hall said.

Czaja is a paleobiologist and astrobiologist who teaches geosciences in UC's College of Arts and Sciences. He was one of the scientists who helped NASA decide where on Mars to send the rover before its launch in 2020. They chose an ancient river delta in Jezero Crater, where Perseverance safely landed in February of 2021 after a seven-month voyage to Mars.

Today, the rover is exploring outside the crater. It has covered a record 23 miles of the Martian surface while taking 29 sediment and rock samples assiduously selected by the NASA scientists for eventual return to Earth. Perseverance also carried a sidekick helicopter named Ingenuity that made 72 flights to scout good routes and interesting features for Perseverance to study while capturing the surface of Mars in incredible detail before its rotors were damaged in a hard landing last year.

UC College of Arts and Sciences graduate student Samuel Hall is working on the NASA science team that is using the rover Perseverance to look for evidence of ancient life on Mars. Photo/Michael Miller

Graduate student Hall is studying paleontology and astrobiology in UC's Department of Geosciences.

"My own research is focused on the origins and early evolution of life on Earth and what it can tell us about the possibility of life on other worlds," Hall said. "Perserverance is searching for the potential remains of ancient life on Mars, so it's really the perfect fit."

NASA recently released its most amazing images to date depicting panoramic views of the Martian landscape. The nearly 360-degree images were stitched from more than 90 images taken from the rover's high mast cameras to provide sharp focus of the foreground rocks and dunes and the distant mountains on the dry alien planet.

"You can see the rover on the right and left edges of the 360-degree image," Czaja explained. "It's like the label of a soup can flattened out."

Andy Czaja, UC Professor of Geosciences

Along with the untouched version of the image depicting the familiar red sky of Mars, the imaging team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory released a color-corrected version depicting a clear blue sky as it would appear on Earth, which somehow makes it seem even more real.

"It's a stunning picture looking west away from the crater," Czaja said. "These pictures are fantastic for science and learning about the rocks."

NASA's rover Perseverance has captured stunning images of Mars such as this mountainous landscape near Jezero Crater. Photo/NASA/JPL

NASA on Wednesday spoke to news outlets about the leopard-spotted rocks. Administrator Sean Duffy said they "could be the clearest sign of life that we've ever found on Mars."

While the rover has a suite of instruments aboard to study rocks, Czaja said they are compact and, though amazing feats of engineering, are not as powerful as the instruments used on Earth. The real prize would be bringing the samples back to Earth to subject them to the latest in spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and other chemical analysis, he said.

While the rover has a suite of instruments aboard to study rocks, Czaja said they are compact and not especially powerful. The real prize would be bringing the samples back to Earth to subject them to the latest in spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and other chemical analysis, he said.

"We are getting all kinds of science out of the mission," Czaja said. "We have learned a lot more about Mars. But the mission was designed to collect samples for eventual return to Earth."

UC College of Arts and Sciences graduate student Samuel Hall is working with Associate Professor Andy Czaja on the NASA science team exploring Mars with the Perseverance rover. Photo/Michael Miller

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