"NASA's Perseverance Mars rover built and managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge collected a rock sample that NASA leaders say offers the best signs yet that ancient Mars harbored some form of life, authorities said Wednesday. The sample, called Sapphire Canyon, was collected from an ancient dry riverbed in one of the planet's craters, showing signs of microbial life, according to a paper published Wednesday, in the journal Nature."
"The biosignatures collected last year aren't exactly household names: There's your millimeter-scale reaction fronts enriched in ferrous iron phosphate and sulfide minerals, likely vivianite and greigite, respectively. Put another way, the rover found signatures of two iron-rich minerals: vivianite (hydrated iron phosphate) and greigite (iron sulfide). According to JPL, Vivianite is frequently found on Earth in sediments, peat bogs, and around decaying organic matter. Certain forms of microbial life on Earth can also produce greigite."
Perseverance collected the Sapphire Canyon rock from an ancient dry riverbed inside a Martian crater, and the sample shows signs consistent with past microbial activity. The sample contains millimeter-scale reaction fronts enriched in ferrous iron phosphate and sulfide minerals, identified as vivianite and greigite, both iron-rich compounds associated with biological or preservational processes on Earth. Bright Angel formation sediments are clay- and silt-rich, which on Earth preserve organics and microbial signatures and contain organic carbon, sulfur, oxidized iron, and phosphorus. The rover cannot directly detect life and caches drilled samples for future analysis.
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