I think NASA knows.

I think they’ve seen something, heard something, or found something and they give us tidbits of information each year.

The latest news coming from Mars is the Rover found organic compounds in several rocks at the Jezero crater. Carbon and nitrogen combined with water form the basis of life and the Perseverance Rover has found plenty of them on the planet.

Don’t Get Too Excited

Even though NASA is excited for its latest find, you can’t get too excited about it. You need more than carbon and nitrogen to have life. You need carbon and nitrogen to be in the right conditions that indicate life.

Perseverance can’t break apart rocks for further examination. The most we can do from this distance is understand where the molecules are located and understand the context of them being there.

We might figure this out sooner rather than later however. Artemis supply missions are necessitating the need for a Deep Space Network and NASA and the Space Force are considering a new Outernet specifically designed for extra-Earth communication.

If we get these things we might be able to bring the samples back from Mars and find out what’s up there, for real.