NASA Finds Organic Salts Are Likely Present on Mars – Remnants of Ancient Martian Microbial Life?

Curiosity Finds Ancient Organic Material

This low-angle self-portrait of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at the site from which it reached down to drill into a rock target called “Buckskin” on lower Mount Sharp. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Salts Could Be Important Piece of Martian Organic Puzzle

A NASA team has found that organic, or carbon-containing, salts are likely present on Mars, with implications for the Red Planet’s past habitability.

A NASA team has found that organic salts are likely present on Mars. Like shards of ancient pottery, these salts are the chemical remnants of organic compounds, such as those previously detected by NASA’s Curiosity rover. Organic compounds and salts on Mars could have formed by geologic processes or be remnants of ancient microbial life.

Besides adding more evidence to the idea that there once was organic matter on Mars, directly detecting organic salts would also support modern-day Martian habitability, given that on Earth, some organisms can use organic salts, such as oxalates and acetates, for energy.

Curiosity's Color View of Martian Dune

Curiosity’s Color View of Martian Dune After Crossing It: This look back at a dune that NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover drove across was taken by the rover’s Mast Camera (Mastcam) on February 9, 2014 – the 538th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity’s mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

“If we determine that there are organic salts concentrated anywhere on Mars, we’ll want to investigate those regions further, and ideally drill deeper below the surface where organic matter could be better preserved,” said James M. T. Lewis, an organic geochemist who led the research, published on March 30, 2021, in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. Lewis is based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Lewis’s lab experiments and analysis of data from the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM), a portable chemistry lab inside Curiosity’s belly, indirectly point to the presence of organic salts. But directly identifying them on Mars is hard to do with instruments like SAM, which heats Martian soil and rocks to release gases that reveal the composition of these samples. The challenge is that heating organic salts produces only simple gases that could be released by other ingredients in Martian soil.


Mass spectrometers are a useful tool that NASA scientists rely on to find out if a sample contains certain molecules. Credit: NASA

However, Lewis and his team propose that another Curiosity instrument that uses a different technique to peer at Martian soil, the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument, or CheMin for short, could detect certain organic salts if they are present in sufficient amounts. So far, CheMin has not detected organic salts.

Finding organic molecules, or their organic salt remnants, is essential in NASA’s search for life on other worlds. But this is a challenging task on the surface of Mars, where billions of years of radiation have erased or broken apart organic matter. Like an archeologist digging up pieces of pottery, Curiosity collects Martian soil and rocks, which may contain tiny chunks of organic compounds, and then SAM and other instruments identify their chemical structure.

Using data that Curiosity beams down to Earth, scientists like Lewis and his team try to piece together these broken organic pieces. Their goal is to infer what type of larger molecules they may once have belonged to and what those molecules could reveal about the ancient environment and potential biology on Mars.

“We’re trying to unravel billions of years of organic chemistry,” Lewis said, “and in that organic record there could be the ultimate prize: evidence that life once existed on the Red Planet.”

While some experts have predicted for decades that ancient organic compounds are preserved on Mars, it took experiments by Curiosity’s SAM to confirm this. For example, in 2018, NASA Goddard astrobiologist Jennifer L. Eigenbrode led an international team of Curiosity mission scientists who reported the detection of myriad molecules containing an essential element of life as we know it: carbon. Scientists identify most carbon-containing molecules as “organic.”


Since arriving at Mars in 2012, NASA’s Curiosity rover has drilled into rocks in search of organics – molecules containing carbon. Now, Curiosity has discovered ancient organics that have been preserved in rocks for billions of years. This finding helps scientists better understand the habitability of early Mars, and it paves the way for future missions to the Red Planet. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Dan Gallagher

“The fact that there’s organic matter preserved in 3-billion-year-old rocks, and we found it at the surface, is a very promising sign that we might be able to tap more information from better preserved samples below the surface,” Eigenbrode said. She worked with Lewis on this new study.

Analyzing Organic Salts in the Lab

Decades ago, scientists predicted that organic compounds on Mars could be breaking down into salts. These salts, they argued, would be more likely to persist on the Martian surface than big, complex molecules, such as the ones that are associated with the functioning of living things.

If there were organic salts present in Martian samples, Lewis and his team wanted to find out how getting heated in the SAM oven could affect what types of gases they would release. SAM works by heating samples to upwards of 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius). The heat breaks apart molecules, releasing some of them as gases. Different molecules release different gases at specific temperatures; thus, by looking at which temperatures release which gases, scientists can infer what the sample is made of.

First Photograph Taken On Mars Surface

First Photograph Taken On Mars Surface: This is the first photograph ever taken on the surface of the planet Mars. It was obtained by Viking 1 just minutes after the spacecraft landed successfully early today [July 20, 1976]. Credit: NASA/JPL

“When heating Martian samples, there are many interactions that can happen between minerals and organic matter that could make it more difficult to draw conclusions from our experiments, so the work we’re doing is trying to pick apart those interactions so that scientists doing analyses on Mars can use this information,” Lewis said.

Lewis analyzed a range of organic salts mixed with an inert silica powder to replicate a Martian rock. He also investigated the impact of adding perchlorates to the silica mixtures. Perchlorates are salts containing chlorine and oxygen, and they are common on Mars. Scientists have long worried that they could interfere with experiments seeking signs of organic matter.

Indeed, researchers found that perchlorates did interfere with their experiments, and they pinpointed how. But they also found that the results they collected from perchlorate-containing samples better matched SAM data than when perchlorates were absent, bolstering the likelihood that organic salts are present on Mars.

Additionally, Lewis and his team reported that organic salts could be detected by Curiosity’s instrument CheMin. To determine the composition of a sample, CheMin shoots X-rays at it and measures the angle at which the X-rays are diffracted toward the detector.

Curiosity’s SAM and CheMin teams will continue to search for signals of organic salts as the rover moves into a new region on Mount Sharp in Gale Crater.

Soon, scientists will also have an opportunity to study better-preserved soil below the Martian surface. The European Space Agency’s forthcoming ExoMars rover, which is equipped to drill down to 6.5 feet, or 2 meters, will carry a Goddard instrument that will analyze the chemistry of these deeper Martian layers. NASA’s Perseverance rover doesn’t have an instrument that can detect organic salts, but the rover is collecting samples for future return to Earth, where scientists can use sophisticated lab machines to look for organic compounds.

Reference: “Pyrolysis of Oxalate, Acetate, and Perchlorate Mixtures and the Implications for Organic Salts on Mars” by J. M. T. Lewis, J. L. Eigenbrode, G. M. Wong, A. C. McAdam, P. D. Archer, B. Sutter, M. Millan, R. H. Williams, M. Guzman, A. Das, E. B. Rampe, C. N. Achilles, H. B. Franz, S. Andrejkovičová, C. A. Knudson and P. R. Mahaffy, 30 March 2021, Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.
DOI: 10.1029/2020JE006803

53 Comments on "NASA Finds Organic Salts Are Likely Present on Mars – Remnants of Ancient Martian Microbial Life?"

  1. I guess that depends on what desert on earth has organic salt underneath it…Lmbo. It amazes how space monkeys believe this nonsense. We can control a rover millions of miles through the vacuum of space with a computer,but cant hardly get signals on earth. Time to wake up from yalls science fiction fantasy. We have all been duped. They are liars. You are programmed little monkeys and you dont care.

    • Yep, millions of people are in on the same hoax. Everything you don’t understand is a hoax. How can your messages post here? You must be a hoax too.

      • They sure are all in on the same hoax. You dont get it. Learn signs, symbols and numbers. The elite control everything you ding bat. What you see on TV. Your programming in schools. You are fed machine. You only repeat what you are fed.. lmbo. Seriously dude. Put some effort towards some research of your own and not what you have been fed. A spinning water ball moving though infinite nothing traveling at 67,000 mph though that same infinite nothing. What a joke. And you accuse flat earthers of insanity…lmbo The whole made up bs of gravity goes agianst your very senses. Look up in the dam sky. We are not moving. Btw Rovers and helicopters that fix themselves millions of miles away. Lmbo Dam you people are the nutty ones to beleive the bull***.

  2. Wow JY – I didn’t think you could make a tin foil hat fit that tight. Does it help you pick up your favorite talk radio station?

    • Actually the tinfoil hat belongs to the programmed masses that beleive in Outer space. You say I a have a tin foil hat on when you beleive we live on a spinning water ball with magic called gravity holding us to the Ball. Get a grip. You are programmed and indoctrinated by the lies. There is solid firmament above us. And above the firmament is water. Not space. You have been fooled by the luciferians that control the world system. All we get in CGI. Lol. Give me a break. Wake up out science fiction fantasy.

      • And I thought it was only Twitter that had people posting absolute nonsense on it. Thanks for proving me wrong JY

        • The nonsense is the lies that you are being fed by the MSM on a daily basis and you beleive it. You are being lies to and dont care.

  3. … then I guess, it is not a waist of taxpayers money,,,… or is it…

  4. I saw Elvis the other day in a Seven Eleven. He was eating a corn dog….

  5. Can’t wait until we hit the poles with rovers. If there was life, I’d bet it’s best preserved where there’s a chance ice has had a chance to help protect it.

    • So this rover fixes itself? Its a super machine. Lmbo. Give a me a break. The masses are so dam brainwashed. And it’s being controlled a millions miles away by a computer? Lmbo You folks beleive anything. Fairy tales much.

  6. Jy you’ve been spoon fed tRump pablum which caused common sense to leave your facilities. The election was lost by the biggest crybaby ever. He will not run in 2024 cuz he won’t be alive. Cancer has no favorites.

    • I dont have a clue what the hell Trump has to do with your Science Fiction fantasy of fake space. Lmbo. First of all you need to learn there is no left/right paradigm. No Republican or Democrat. It’s all an illusion. Your votes do not matter. The controllers of the world system are fooling us all. You actually beleive we are spinning at 1000mph while traveling through infinite nothing at 67,000 mph? Goes against your senses. Look up in the dam sky. We are no moving…wow

    • I dont have a clue what the hell Trump has to do with your Science Fiction fantasy of fake space. Lmbo. First of all you need to learn there is no left/right paradigm. No Republican or Democrat. It’s all an illusion. Your votes do not matter. The controllers of the world system are fooling us all. You actually beleive we are spinning at 1000mph while traveling through infinite nothing at 67,000 mph? Goes against your senses. Look up in the dam sky. We are no moving…

  7. cory kreutzer | May 24, 2021 at 3:41 pm | Reply

    There are people who believe space is fake. Can one imagine what it must be like to be the only person on earth with a thought process. Baaaaaa to them

  8. You hAve been fooled into believing that space is real. No one can go into outer space. Even the rockets don’t go straight up.

    • They go straight in the Ocean after their curve. Lmbo.. That’s exactly why the liars do it near the water.

  9. The earth is not spinning.

      • TY, why make up handles to try to validate your brainwashed ideas.

      • Show yourself some proof the world is flat, there is no sun, and we are surrounded by water.

        • Show me proof of fake space? You cant. It’s all CGI and smoke and mirrors. I can prove we are not moving. Look up in the sky. Water always finds its level also. You have no proof we are moving 1000mph except for the fake magic Masonic math they use on the masses to make the sh*t look real. Most people have no idea what that fake math bullsh*t is all about, so they dont dispute it. They just go along with it. Programmed monkeys. Prove we are moving 67,000 mph though infinite nothing. Lmbo ridiculous. All you are getting is Hollywood productions and pretty poors ones if you ask me. All the money they steal. They could get better CGI.

        • Show me proof of fake space? You cant. It’s all CGI and smoke and mirrors. I can prove we are not moving. Look up in the sky. Water always finds its level also. You have no proof we are moving 1000mph except for the fake magic Masonic math they use on the masses to make the sh*t look real. Most people have no idea what that fake math bullsh*t is all about, so they dont dispute it. They just go along with it. Programmed monkeys. Prove we are moving 67,000 mph though infinite nothing. Lmbo ridiculous. All you are getting is Hollywood productions and pretty poors ones if you ask me. They could get better CGI.

        • Show me proof of fake space? You cant. It’s all CGI and smoke and mirrors. I can prove we are not moving. Look up in the sky. Water always finds its level also. You have no proof we are moving 1000mph except for the fake magic Masonic math they use on the masses to make the sh*t look real. Most people have no idea what that fake math bullsh*t is all about, so they dont dispute it. They just go along with it. Programmed monkeys. Prove we are moving 67,000 mph though infinite nothing. Lmbo ridiculous. All you are getting is Hollywood productions and pretty poors ones if you ask me. They could get better CGI.

  10. If the earth were spinning, why does it take the same amount of time to travel from the east coast to the west coast and back. It should take longer when traveling from San Francisco to New York if the earth is rotating. Think about it.

  11. Thomas Zimmer | May 27, 2021 at 6:10 am | Reply

    All nonsense!!!!
    Moon landing, happy astronauts driving dune buggies and running around on the moon…What were these film producers and Nasa on? Come on,anybody would be scared sh..less… “Playing golf?”
    Lack of atmosphere has caused the moon to be smashed and cratered by asteroids and particulates for over 4.5 billion years.
    Look at “lunar” images of the lander…pristine! not a burn mark, no damage from radiation or particulates smashing into everything at 20,000 mph!
    Any aluminum foil space craft fallacy would be burnt up and peppered like Swiss cheese…
    They should have had the wherewithal to throw a shovel of sand on those landing pod fake photos…the “space craft” looks pristine!
    Come on people, look at the detail within Nasa’s photos.
    How naive people can be.
    Space is a violent place yet they manage to travel 100’s of thousands miles with no damage…?
    Can’t fool all of the people that have “Common Sense” and a take on the reasons why we can’t survive beyond our protective atmospheres…
    Take a good look at the known science…Flat Earth, Mars? Get real
    Fake news again.
    The question is why?

    • Only the inner shell was aluminum. They had heat Shields on the outer surface, and many layers of other materials in between.

    • Why would they be scared? Because you would be. Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t make it fake.

      • Stu. Please stop with the nonsense you been fed all your life..lmbo

      • Your mama…how in the he** cannot you not see what this man just said? You people are brainwashed. Programmed from the time you were in grade school to beleive this bulls***

  12. Jy. Why are you here? Can’t believe you use the internet. It’s has to be fake. And tell me, where does your flat Earth end? At what point will you fall off? Or do you run into a glass wall? I’d like to know the all of the end boundaries of your flat Earth. I don’t want to drown in the water that is above us. Or below us. Or is there nothing below us.
    I wish they would make the sun, or light as you say, be more Earth friendly. I hate hot humid summer’s.

  13. Jy, ma, jl, and ay are all the same person. Lol.

    • Let me tell you how stupid you are and why I can understand your brainwashing. You think I have other handles on here. I am JY brother. I speak the truth. Those others speak for themselves.

  14. Why doesn’t an airplane traveling in the opposite direction of the Earth’s rotation move faster than one traveling in the same direction of the Earth’s rotation?

    There are enough answers to this that the question has to have been answered correctly.

    But I’m going to counter propose an answer.

    The aircraft that is flying in the direction of the Earth’s rotation is actually going faster that the aircraft going opposite the earths rotation. How so? I’ll explain in a second.

    First, to probably mirror ALL of the other answers, the earth, the atmosphere, and the aircraft on the ground all start out moving at the same speed. OK, with winds, the atmosphere is a little wanky in that regard. But essentially it’s the truth. If there were two aircraft and they took off flying in opposite directions around the equator at the same power setting and the same altitude and with NO winds, they would be flying at the same ground speed — they’d be traveling equally fast over the ground. And equally fast relative to their starting point. The rotation of the Earth would have no effect on either aircraft.

    So, where did I get the dumb idea that the airplane going in the direction of the Earth’s rotation would be going faster? Because, relative to the point in “space” (not ground) where it started the aircrafts’ speed through space around the rotating Earth would be a combination of the aircraft’s speed and the speed that the earth is rotating. The aircraft going in the other direction — opposite the earths’ spin — would be traveling at the earth’s rotational speed minus the aircrafts speed.

    And just to be clear, for the purposes of this explanation, event though I’m using a reference point “in space” rather than on the Earth’s surface, I’m ignoring the Earths’ speed through the Solar System, the Solar System’s speed through the Milky Way Galaxy, and the Galaxy’s speed through the Universe

    • Stu brain. We have heard all your stupid explanations so many dam times it’s a joke to us. You space monkeys have a rebuttle for every thing we question. And for people who are no longer brainwashed they are all laughable and stupid and predictable. The earth is not a spinning water ball STU. There are no satellites STU. We have a solid firmament above us STU. There is also water above us STU. The Sun and Moon are both lights. They are both inside the Firmament and local. You are brainwashed or a NASA pinocchio nose grower.

  15. Easy answer.
    The Earth rotates. The atmosphere around the Earth rotates with the Earth. Everything on the ground, in the water, or in the air also rotates – with the Earth – at the same speed as the Earth.

    • Stu…not an easy answer. It’s a NASA brainwashing answer. Typical bs. Lmbo Can you stop repeating the same crap. We are awkw Stu. Never to return to the brainwashing.

  16. When ever someone doesn’t understand something, they think is fake, a hoax. The one’s here that think the Earth is Flat, and there is no sun, it’s just a light, and we never landed on the moon, please give some proof.

    • I think you are the programmed monkeys. Its a shame that you allow these liars to manipulate your minds into beleiving such utter bs. How the hell you can call a common sense flat plain to a fairy tale to a spinning magic marble holding water to it. How in the hell can you even compare the two. Flat plain is logical. Magic water ball spinning through infinite nothing at ungodly speeds not logical at all. Rovers and helicopters being controlled millions of miles away through the vacuum of space with a freaken computer and when they break down they fix themselves. Do you not see just how stupid your logic is?.lmbo Its CGI you foolish people.

    • STU…are really that ignorant? The Sun and Moon are inside the firmament. Local Stu. Rotating inside the Firmament. Yes Stu. They move. Not the Earth. When your awake Stu bug there is no going back to the lies. See Stu bug. The spinning marble never made sense even when they tried programming me in school. Its goes against your very senses. There is a God Stu. And we will face him one day. Be ready Stu bug.

  17. The internet is fake too. We aren’t really talking to anyone. Lol.

    • The internet is functioning do to underwater cables and cell towers. Not satellites. Another dam hoax you space monkeys fall for. You never get anything but CGI with NASA and all the fake space agencies. The clowns all work together to fool you. And you let them

  18. Holy Crap Some People!!!! | May 27, 2021 at 10:00 pm | Reply

    Ok, I’ll say it. My god you’re dumb. Yeah, the whole planet, all 8 billion people are in on the cconspiracy. All just to fool you!!!
    You should take your meds and then come back and read what you’ve said.
    Sigh…Must be hard carrying the burden of the entire human race being all against YOU and YOU only. LOL. Thanks for the laugh moron.

    • It’s called programming you idiot. Brainwashing since you were a child. Constantly feeding the Ball earth lie everywhere you go. In your Churches, government buildings, TV, Movies. It fed to you constantly as truth.

      Space and all that comes with it is literally the most impossible fantasy land thing imaginable… Everything is based off of assumptions, theories, non-provable, unobservable, made-up, and invisible mathemagical nonsense that exists only on paper and in the minds of liars… Space is Fake. Wake up, people!

    • By the idiot. The entire human race is not programmed. Many are waking up to the scam. Ever thought that the mental illness should be for those who believe CGI,gravity and all the other bs fed to them. You have faith in a freaken picture. How do the rovers fix themselves? How does the helicopter fix itself? How do batteries last 40 years or longer? You think coming on here and calling me a moron is going to change the fact that you are progrmmed sheep…lmbo

  19. Looking at these pictures carefully, showing us these were takien in Oman desert, where they did a simulation of moving of such machines in Mars. The shapes of sands and shows indicate they were formed by winds. If you look at the forms ofground and rocks, you will notices their were shaped by water rain. I guess these pucs are from their archives when they did the experiment in Oman.

  20. Alexandria Arrieta | May 23, 2023 at 10:57 am | Reply

    what’s up, puissant blog on unctuous loss. such a person helped.

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