NASA's Perseverance Mars rover hitting paydirt in search of clues about possible past life

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover has collected and stored samples of rocks made up of minerals and organic compounds that, on Earth, would likely preserve traces of past microbial life, researchers said Thursday. The soil samples were gathered at the base of an ancient river delta fanning out from the rim of Jezero Crater. 

But to find out if any such "potential biosignatures" include actual traces of past life on Mars, scientists will have to wait for a NASA-European Space Agency mission at the end of the decade to collect them and bring them back to Earth for detailed laboratory analysis.

"The samples that we've collected as we presented here today ... have ingredients for life in terms of the environmental setting," said David Shuster, a Perseverance return sample scientist at the University of California.