By Yesim Dikmen
SALDA, Turkey (Reuters) – While NASA’s persistence examines the Martian surface, scientists looking for signs of ancient life on the distant planet use data collected on a mission closer to home at a lake southwest of Turkey.
NASA says the minerals and rock deposits at Salda are the closest match on earth with those around the Jezero crater where the spacecraft landed and which was apparently once flooded with water.
Information gathered from Lake Saldam can help scientists search for fossilized traces of microbial life preserved in sediment thought to have been deposited around the delta and the long-lost lake that once fed it.
“Salda … will serve as a powerful analogue in which we can learn and interrogate,” Thomas Zurbuchen, a NASA associate in science, told Reuters.
A team of American and Turkish planetary scientists conducted research in 2019 on the shorelines of the lake, known as Turkey’s Maldives, because of its blue waters and white shores.
Scientists believe that the sediments around the lake have eroded from large mounds formed using microbes and known as microbialites.
The team behind the Perseverance rover, the most advanced astrobiology lab ever flown to another world, wants to find out if there are microbialites in the Jezero crater.
They will also compare the beach sediments of Salda with carbonate minerals – formed from carbon dioxide and water, an important ingredient for life – found on the edge of Jezero crater.
“If we find something at Perseverance, we can look at Saldameer again to look at both processes, (look at) similarities, but equally important are the differences between Perseverance and Saldameer,” Zurbuchen said.
“So we are very happy that we have the lake, just because I think it will be with us for a long time”.
Samples of rock drilled from Martian soil must be stored on the surface for eventual recovery and delivery to Earth by two future robotic missions, all in 2031.
(Reported by Yesim Dikmen; edited by Dominic Evans and Alison Williams)