Perseverance can only do so much with the instruments it carries, but back on Earth, scientists could study Cheyava Falls with their largest, most powerful tools. They could learn more about what’s in the rock, how it formed, and its history on the surface of Mars.
Cheyava Falls is far from the only intriguing thing that Mars Sample Return would bring back, either. Each specimen from Mars would have the potential to tell us more about the others, and together the collection would paint a broader picture of the planet’s past.
A discovery, no matter what
If scientists end up finding that no part of Cheyava Falls was produced by microbes, the discovery would still expand our ideas for how life could have begun on Mars. It would mean, for one, that the rock’s organic compounds would have formed on their own, without life. Understanding that process could hint at how common the ingredients for life were on early Mars.
“Even if it’s ‘just’ a building block of life, a building block of life is pretty darn exciting, too,” Ehlmann explains.