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Last summer NASA's Perseverance Mars rover investigated its "most puzzling, complex, and potentially important rock yet," according to one mission scientist. It showed signs of past water, organic material, and clues suggesting chemical reactions by microbial life.
Now, after a rigorous, yearlong peer-review process, during which outside scientists scrutinized the Mars 2020 team's data and analysis, the journal Nature has published the validated results: Perseverance's "Sapphire Canyon" sample indeed contains potential biosignatures -- clues that suggest past life may have been present, but that require more data or further study before any conclusions about the absence or presence of life.