NASA’s Major NEW Discovery On Mars Will Change Elon Musk's whole Plans!

Mars is an obvious source of inspiration for science fiction stories. Technological development has already begun to enable a crude Mars mission before the end of the 2020s. SpaceX founder Elon Musk has made no secret of his plans to send humans to Mars by 2050. The tech titan has talked about his dream to make a human colony on the red planet. However, it's not easy to fulfill that ambitious dream. For one thing, we still don't understand Mars as much as we'd like to admit. And Mars has tricked us before. Scientists still don't fully understand how the planet functions as a whole. Luckily, NASA's Mars rover just made progress, and its recent discoveries could even change everything for Musk's plan of colonizing Mars. Let's find out what these discoveries are in today's episode of Great SpaceX. The Perseverance rover has made its most exciting find on the red planet to date. According to NASA scientists, investigating the site of an ancient river delta, the Perseverance rover has collected some of the most important samples yet on its mission to determine if life ever existed on Mars. A few of the recent collected samples include organic matter, indicating that Jezero crater, which likely once held a lake and the delta that emptied into it, had potentially habitable environments three and a half billion years ago. The rocks that we have been investigating on the delta have the highest concentration of organic matter that we have yet found on the mission, said Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The rover's mission, which began on the red planet 18 months ago, includes looking for signs of ancient microbial life. Perseverance is collecting rock samples that could have preserved these telltale biosignatures. Currently, the rover contains 12 rock samples. A series of missions called Mars Sample Return will eventually take the collection back to Earth in the 2030s. The site of the delta makes Jezero crater, which spans 28 miles or 45 kilometers, of particularly high interest to NASA scientists. The fan-shaped geological feature, once present where a river converged with a lake, preserves layers of Martian history in sedimentary rock, which formed with particles fused together in this formerly water-filled environment. The rover investigated the crater floor and found evidence of igneous, or volcanic, rock. During its second campaign to study the delta over the past five months, Perseverance has found rich sedimentary rock layers that add more to the story of Mars' ancient climate and environment. The delta, with its diverse sedimentary rocks, contrasts beautifully with the igneous rocks formed from crystallization of magma discovered on the crater floor, Farley said. This juxtaposition provides us with a rich understanding of the geologic history after the crater formed and a diverse sample suite. For example, we found a sandstone that carries grains and rock fragments created far from Jezero crater. The mission team nicknamed one of the rocks that Perseverance sampled as Wildcat Ridge. The rock likely formed when mud and sand settled in a saltwater lake, as it evaporated billions of years ago. The rover scraped away at the surface of the rock and analyzed it with an instrument known as the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organic and Chemicals, or SHERLOCK. This rock-zapping laser functions as a fancy blacklight to uncover chemicals, minerals, and organic matter, said Sunanda Sharma, SHERLOCK scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. The instrument's analysis revealed that the organic minerals are likely aromatics, or stable molecules of carbon and hydrogen, which are connected to sulfates. Sulfate minerals, often found sandwiched between the layers of sedimentary rocks, preserve information about the watery environments they formed in. Organic molecules are of interest on Mars because they represent the building blocks of life, such as carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, as well as nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur. Not all organic molecules require life to form because some can be created through chemical processes. While the detection of this class of organics alone does not mean that life was definitively there, this set of observations does start to look like some things that we've seen here on Earth, Sharma said. To put it simply, if this is a treasure hunt for potential signs of life on another planet, organic matter is a clue, and we're getting stronger and stronger clues as we're moving through our Delta campaign. Suburans as well as the Curiosity rover has found organic matter before on Mars, but this time the detection occurred in an area where life may have once existed. In the distant past, the sand, mud, and salts that now make up the Wildcat Ridge sample were deposited under conditions where life could potentially have thrived, Farley said. The fact the organic matter was found in such a sedimentary rock known for preserving fossils of ancient life here on Earth is important. However, as capable as our instruments aboard Perseverance are, further conclusions regarding what is contained in the Wildcat Ridge sample will have to wait until its return to Earth. For in-depth study as part of the agency's Mars sample return campaign. One piece of sandstone called Skinner Ridge is evidence of rocky material that was likely transported into the crater from hundreds of miles away, representing material that the rover won't be able to travel to during its mission. Wildcat Ridge, on the other hand, preserves evidence of clays and sulfates that layered together and formed into rock. Once the samples are in labs on Earth, they could reveal insights about potentially habitable Martian environments, such as chemistry, temperature, and when the material was deposited in the lake. And the obtained results are completely capable of changing everything on Musk's plan to conquer Mars. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said that he hopes for a self-sustaining city on the Red Planet in 20 years time, as his space company prepares Starship to take people and cargo to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Musk said in a tweet, I hope there is a self-sustaining city on Mars in 20 years. A month earlier, the world's richest man said he was optimistic that humanity will reach Mars in your lifetime. Without a common goal, humanity will fight itself. The Moon brought us together in 1969. Mars can do that in the future, Musk had said. The Tesla CEO had stated that making life multi-planetary will help back up the ecosystems on Earth, and added that apart from humans, no other species can transport life to Mars. Referring to biblical patriarch Noah who built an ark that survived the Great Flood on Earth, Musk said his Starship models will be modern Noah's Arks that can save life from a calamity on Earth. SpaceX's Starship consists of a giant first stage booster called Super Heavy and a 165 foot tall or 50 meter upper stage spacecraft known as Starship. Both elements are designed to be fully reusable and both will be powered by SpaceX's next generation Raptor engines, 33 for Super Heavy and 6 for Starship. The company is currently accelerating progress towards implementing Starship's first orbital flight. That flight, according to the latest schedule Musk revealed, is highly likely to take place in November of 2022 and possibly as early as late October. And that's it for today's episode. 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