(Radio Iowa) – A planetary geologist at the University of Iowa is part of an elite NASA team pouring over data being relayed from the Perseverance Mars Rover, which has discovered some of the clearest signs yet of ancient life on the Red Planet. Valerie Payré, a professor in the U-I’s School of Earth, Environment, and Sustainability, is working with what’s called the rover’s SuperCam, which uses a laser and spectrometers to determine the origin of rocks on the Martian surface. “Every day, I receive some images and analysis from the Perseverance rover that is looking at the chemistry and makeup of rocks around the rover,” Payré says. “So every day we are a team, looking at the measurements and the images, trying to understand what is going on around the rover and understanding the geology of the surroundings.”

The SuperCam has sophisticated instruments which NASA says can identify the chemical and mineral makeup of Martian samples as small as a pencil point, from a distance of more than 20 feet. The rover is exploring Jezero Crater, which was once a lake, searching for a sign of life — and she says it may’ve found one.  “The rover took a picture of the surroundings and it looked at this really interesting rock that had those rounded features on it,” Payré says. “That was really interesting because when we see that on Earth, usually those rounded features are byproducts of life. So right away, we wanted to see what those were made of, and if it was the same thing as what we’re seeing on Earth.”

Similar rounded rocks on Earth can indicate byproducts of microbial life, like what can be found in sedimentary deposits in lakes, but the compounds can also be formed in other ways that -don’t- include a life form.”So we are on the fence some here, and to understand whether this rock is related to life, we need to do more analysis, but we don’t have the instrumentation on board the rover for that,” Payré says. “We would love to have that rock on Earth and look at more chemistry in there to see if indeed those features are related to life or not.”

Payré says every day holds new opportunities, and they’re never sure when the next image may contain elements of a billion-year-old biosignature.  “This is a very cool discovery and exciting for us, but also for the public, because those could be related to life,” Payré says, “and that would mean maybe we’re not alone in the universe.”