Noachian tagged posts

In 2024, NASA’s Perseverance rover found surprising levels of Nickel in the Martian bedrock of an ancient river channel, called Neretva Vallis, which flowed into the Jezero crater. A new study, published in Nature Communications, has taken a closer look at the data collected from the region and researchers are seeing what could be remnants of ancient Martian life.

Nickel as a biosignature
Although nickel is not typically thought of as a major component of human life, it is important in many microbial metabolism functions...

Scientists exploring Mars and analysing Martian meteorite samples have found organic compounds essential for life: nitrogen-bearing organics in a 4-billion-year-old Martian meteorite. With a new high-spatial resolution in-situ N-chemical speciation technique, they found organic materials – either synthesized locally or delivered during the Noachian – preserved intact in carbonate minerals over a long geological period. Their presence requires abiotic or biotic N-fixation and ammonia storage, suggesting early Mars had a less oxidizing environment than today.

Because carbonate miner...

Ritchey Crater, located near the Martian equator, has impact melt deposits containing clay minerals. Impact melt forms when rock melted during an impact cools and hardens. The clay minerals found within these deposits are very likely to have formed after the impact event. Most clay minerals on Mars are thought to have formed during the earliest Martian epoch, known as the Noachian. However, evidence from Ritchey crater and other post-Noachian craters, suggests that clay formation after the Noachian was not uncommon. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/Brown University

Clays and other minerals formed when rocks are altered by water have been found in multiple locations on Mars. It’s been assumed that these minerals probably formed in the earliest Martian epoch, >3.7B yrs ago...