Did NASA’s Perseverance rover actually find evidence of life on Mars? According to scientists, confirmation will only come if its samples make it back to Earth.
On Wednesday (Sept. 10), the Perseverance team announced possible biosignatures in fragments of a Mars rock named “Cheyava Falls,” first studied last year. The rover detected intriguing minerals, including vivianite and greigite, in clay-rich sediments from a dried-out lakebed.
“The combination of these minerals, which appear to have formed by electron-transfer reactions between the sediment and organic matter, is a potential fingerprint for microbial life,” NASA officials stated. However, they emphasized these minerals could also form through purely geological processes.
Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said, “We basically threw the entire rover science payload at this rock. We’re pretty close to the limits of what the rover can do on the surface regarding this question.”
From the start, Perseverance was designed for a sample-return mission. Since landing in Jezero Crater in February 2021, it has collected and sealed Martian rock and soil samples in small tubes. The plan is to transport about 30 of these to Earth for deeper analysis.
Originally, NASA and the European Space Agency aimed to return samples by 2033, with costs estimated around $3 billion. By 2023, however, costs had ballooned to $8–11 billion, pushing the timeline back to around 2040.
In April 2024, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced a strategic overhaul, considering new designs from research centers, academia, and private companies. By January, two options were on the table: a NASA-developed “sky crane” lander or a commercially built landing system. Both approaches could cost between $5.8 billion and $7.7 billion and potentially deliver samples by 2035.
But funding cuts threaten these plans. The proposed 2026 federal budget from President Donald Trump would slash NASA’s overall funding by 24% and nearly halve science funding. This could cancel multiple missions, including Mars Sample Return.
Still, NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy assured that alternatives exist. “We believe there’s a better way to do this, a faster way to get these samples back,” he said, though without providing details.
Private players such as Rocket Lab and Lockheed Martin have already suggested cost-efficient missions, and SpaceX could leverage its Starship for MSR. Meanwhile, China’s Tianwen 3 mission aims to bring Mars samples home by 2031, intensifying the race.
For now, Perseverance’s possible biosignatures remain unconfirmed, waiting for a way back to Earth.
