SALDA LAKE, Turkey – As NASA’s Perseverance rover explores the surface of Mars, scientists looking for signs of ancient life on the distant planet use data collected on a mission much closer to a lake in southwestern Turkey.
NASA says the Salda mineral and rock deposits are the closest match to Earth to those around Jezero crater where the spacecraft landed and is believed to have once been flooded with water.
The information gathered from Lake Salda may help scientists search for fossilized traces of microbial life preserved in sediments that are believed to have been deposited around the delta and the missing lake it fed.
“Salda … will serve us as a powerful analog in which we can learn and interrogate,” Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate science administrator, told Reuters.
A team of American and Turkish planetary scientists conducted research in 2019 on the shores of the lake, known as the Maldives of Turkey for its azure waters and white shores.
Scientists believe that sediments around the lake were eroded from large mounds that form with the help of microbes and are known as microbialites.
The team behind the Perseverance rover, the most advanced astrobiology lab that has flown to another world, wants to find out if there are microbialites in Jezero crater.
They will also compare the sediments of Salda beach with carbonate minerals – formed from carbon dioxide and water, a key ingredient for life – detected on the banks of the Jezero crater.
“When we find something in Perseverance, we can look back at Lake Salda to really look at the two processes, (looking at) the similarities, but the equally important differences that really exist between Perseverance and Lake Salda,” Zurbuchen said.
“So we’re very happy to have this lake, just because I think it’ll be with us for a long time.”
Samples of perforated rock from the Martian soil must be stored on the surface for eventual recovery and delivery to Earth through two future robotic missions, as early as 2031.