NASA has somehow uncovered more evidence to suggest Mars may have once been friendly to life as we know it on Earth.
According to the Los Angeles Times, authors of a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found traces of nitrates in a Martian rock the Curiosity rover previously collected. The scientists said nitrogen goes hand-in-hand with carbon in sustaining life.
Study lead author Jennifer Stern, a planetary geochemist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, said the team analyzed the rock samples using Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite of instruments.
"Finding a biochemically accessible form of nitrogen is more support for the ancient Martian environment at Gale Crater being habitable," she said in a press release. "Scientists have long thought that nitrates would be produced on Mars from the energy released in meteorite impacts, and the amounts we found agree well with estimates from this process."
Past research has noted Mars' thin atmosphere as a major factor in why the Red Planet dried up and NASA is determined to learn more with a satellite currently in orbit. But while Curiosity has searched for traces of carbon, the discovery of nitrogen may be just as significant.
"People want to follow the carbon, but in many ways nitrogen is just as important a nutrient for life," Stern told the Times. "Life runs on nitrogen as much as it runs on carbon.
"What we're detecting is nitric oxide, but we know from lab experiments that when we heat up nitrates, they break down in a predictable way," she said. "And that's why we think these are nitrates."
