Life on Mars? UNLV professor leads study of first soil samples from Mars

Some Las Vegans have been looking to the sky for hints of alien life for decades, but UNLV geoscience professor Libby Hausrath has gotten closer than any of them to finding sound proof.

This isn’t any conspiracy theory or pseudoscience: Using samples collected from NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, Hausrath became the lead author of a study analyzing NASA’s first-ever Martian samples of soil, airfall dust and rock fragments that are set to be returned to Earth in the 2030s.

“It’s possible that Mars could have had ancient life on it,” said Hausrath, an aqueous geochemist who studies how water and minerals interact. “We’ve lost a lot of information about the early part of Earth’s history. That’s not true of Mars.”

The regolith, or materials that cover the ground of the planet, tells an ancient water story — one that students of space like Hausrath are uncovering, piece by piece.

Rover launched during pandemic

One of the bright spots of the COVID-19 pandemic for Hausrath was knowing that the Mars 2020 mission took flight.

Building the rover and launching it came with a hefty bill for NASA: $2.4 billion and a subsequent $300 million for the primary mission on Mars.

The rover, lovingly dubbed Percy, launched into space from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in July 2020, arriving the following February. It landed on what’s known as the Jezero Crater — a 28-mile-wide, dried-up lake bed that scientists determined was the prime location for sample collection.

Soon enough, Percy gathered samples, and Hausrath got to work alongside a group of scientists from across the country. In her role on the tactical science team, she and her collaborators would decide on what instructions to give the rover next.

In a UNLV news release, Hausrath said seeing the rover’s images up close was “like a video game,” and the research process was like it was “out of science fiction.”

Remotely operating the rover from Earth, the team commanded it to launch a laser that measured chemistry and mineralogy. Smaller instruments measured dust at a finer scale, and the rover’s wheels dug trenches that allowed a peek below the crater’s surface.

“Doing this is hard,” Hausrath said in a later interview. “But if you do it on another planet, it’s even harder.”

Why Mars?

Scientists have determined Mars is the most likely planet in our solar system other than Earth where life could have survived.

Because Mars doesn’t have tectonic plates that constantly change the surface, regolith holds clues about the planet’s 4.6-billion-year lifespan. Much like how scientists can look at the rings of a tree to determine age, soil and air chemistry keeps natural secrets.

Yang Liu, a NASA research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, wasn’t involved in the study but said Hausrath’s work is an example of why it’s important for researchers to look closely at Mars.

“Regolith has the potential to record water and surface interactions for eons,” Liu said. “Water is one of the key elements for life on Earth. Studying the water history is key for understanding whether life ever emerged on Mars, and if it did, when did it occur, and how it occurred.”

Still, open queries remain when it comes to the logistics of potential terrestrial life on the planet, Liu said.

“The question is: ‘Why don’t we have similar life on Mars? What happened?’” Liu said. “Maybe there was once life on Mars but it got buried and destroyed. Could we just not have enough analytical ability on Mars to answer these questions? Those questions won’t be answered until we have ability to look at those samples carefully.”

Return of samples crucial

The international effort to bring the samples back down to Earth is ongoing.

NASA and the European Space Agency are planning to get them here between 2035 and 2039. They will first be inspected for safety and later released for the world’s scientists to study in more detail.

Being able to use tools that couldn’t be replicated for the rover mission could reveal new insights, Hausrath said.

“As amazing as the rover’s instruments are, they can’t definitively say whether there used to be life,” Hausrath said. “But potentially on Earth, someone could.”

The study of Mars’ regolith lays the groundwork for further study of the planet by human astronauts. When man reached the moon, astronauts found that the regolith was sharp enough to cut through their protective suits.

Insights into the surface of Mars could be crucial for future missions, Liu said.

“Just like Earth, Mars has polar ice deposits, like in Antarctica, with huge amounts of water and ice,” Liu said. “I think there may be future discovery or even bigger missions. It’s not the end to Mars exploration.”

Aside from fulfilling a lifelong professional dream for Hausrath, the study represents promising strides in her field, she said. Hausrath hopes her work can inspire young scientists.

“There’s so much we don’t know, and every mission finds something incredibly surprising,” Hausrath said.

“I try to always hope that students will persevere in science if they’re interested in it,” she added. “Science is hard for everybody, regardless of how good they are at it. I really encourage people to persevere, because we need them to solve societal problems.”

Contact Alan Halaly at ahalaly@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlanHalaly on X.