NASA Finds Glass In Mars That Could Indicate Past Life

There were actually glass deposits within impact craters in Mars, reveals NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The deposits were formed in the blazing heat of a "violent impact," said a press releases from NASA and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), according to hngn.

Research shows that past life can be preserved in impact glass on Earth. In 2014, scientist Peter Schultz of Brown University in Providence, R.I., saw organic molecules and plant matter preserved in glass that had been formed due to an impact occurring millions of years ago in Argentina.

Maybe there were similar processes that preserved life in Mars, if they had been present in Mars during the strong impact. It was in 2006 that MRO arrived at Mars and brought back data on the Red Planet since then, according to mashable.

Kevin Cannon and Jack Mustard, both Brown scientists, built up on earlier research, and documented information about Martian impact glass in a report that is now online in the journal Geology.

"The work done by Pete and others showed us that glasses are potentially important for preserving biosignatures," Cannon said. "Knowing that, we wanted to go look for them on Mars and that's what we did here. Before this paper, no one had been able to definitively detect them on the surface."

Cannon and Mustard demonstrated that huge glass deposits were present in many old, well-preserved Martian craters. Picking them out was tough, but to detect minerals and rock types, they measured the spectra of light that was reflected off the planet's surface. However, impact glass doesn't have a strong spectral signal.

"Glasses tend to be spectrally bland or weakly expressive, so signature from the glass tends to be overwhelmed by the chunks of rock mixed in with it," said Mustard. "But Kevin found a way to tease that signal out."

Their techniques did find deposits in many Martian crater central peaks. These were craggy mounds in the middle of a crater when there was a huge impact. Deposits on central peaks indicated their impact origin. Understanding that impact glass can preserve ancient signs of life, which can also be present on Martian surface, could pioneer a new strategy in the search for historical Martian life.

"The researchers' analysis suggests glass deposits are relatively common impact features on Mars," said Jim Green, director of NASA's planetary science division at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "These areas could be targets for future exploration as our robotic scientific explorers pave the way on the journey to Mars with humans in the 2030s."

Mustard said: "If you had an impact that dug in and sampled that subsurface environment, it's possible that some of it might be preserved in a glassy component. That makes this a pretty compelling place to go look around, and possibly return a sample."