Hunting for aliens on Mars, NASA scientists collect clues from Turkish lakes

ANKARA – As NASA rover Perseverance scoured the surface Mars Scientists hunting for signs of ancient life on the red planet used data gathered from a lake in southwestern Turkey.

NASA says the minerals and rock deposits in Lake Salda are among the most suitable on earth to those around the Jezero Crater where the spacecraft landed and are believed to have once filled with water. (Read: Scientists Prove New Life Can Form on Mars)

The information gathered from Lake Salda could help scientists as they look for fossil traces of microbial life preserved in the sediments thought to have settled around the long-lost deltas and lakes it once fed.

“Salda will serve as a powerful analogy in which we can study and find out the conditions of other planets,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, administrator of the association. NASA for science, to Reuters .

A team of American and Turkish planetary scientists conducted research in 2019 on the shoreline of the lake, known as the Turkish Maldives for its blue waters and white beaches.

Scientists believe that the sediment around the lake was eroded from the large mounds that formed with the help of microbes and are known as microbialites. (Also read: Archaeologists Reveal Why the Egyptians Mummified Nile River Crocodiles)

The team behind the Perseverance explorer, the most advanced astrobiology lab ever flown to another world, wanted to find out if there were any microbes in Jezero Crater.

They will also compare coastal sediments from the Salda with carbonate minerals – which are formed from carbon dioxide and water, the main ingredients of life – detected on the outskirts of the Jezero Crater.

“When we find something at Perseverance, we can come back to look at Lake Salda to really look at both processes, (see) similarities but equally important,” Zurbuchen said. (Also read: This is what happens to Umi if oxygen runs out and the sun dies)

Rock samples drilled from the ground Mars must be stored on the surface to be retrieved and sent to Earth by two future robotic missions, at the earliest.

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