--- title: What NASA's Discovery Reveals About Life on Mars description: The Perseverance rover's discovery is the "closest we have ever come to discovering life on Mars." canonical: https://time.com/7316375/nasa-perseverance-rover-discovery-life-on-mars/ author: Jeffrey Kluger article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-09-11T13:34:46.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:50:07.894Z article:section: Science og:title: The Case for Life on Mars Just Got Stronger og:description: The Perseverance rover's discovery is the "closest we have ever come to discovering life on Mars." og:url: https://time.com/7316375/nasa-perseverance-rover-discovery-life-on-mars/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2a952f26fa996e1e/6998c9aec8dcb45275b5076d/1-PIA26368-Perseverance_Finds_a_Rock_with_Leopard_Spots.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1648 og:image:height: 927 og:image:alt: 1-PIA26368-Perseverance_Finds_a_Rock_with_Leopard_Spots og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Case for Life on Mars Just Got Stronger twitter:description: The Perseverance rover's discovery is the "closest we have ever come to discovering life on Mars." twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2a952f26fa996e1e/6998c9aec8dcb45275b5076d/1-PIA26368-Perseverance_Finds_a_Rock_with_Leopard_Spots.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # NASA Discovery Is the 'Closest We Have Ever Come to Discovering Life on Mars' > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Future Proof: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Future Proof is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Making sense of the climate and energy economy. Future Proof examines the forces transforming energy and climate, and what those changes mean for business, technology, policy and the global economy. Senior correspondent Justin Worland goes beyond traditional climate coverage to connect the energy transition to the bigger decisions reshaping companies, markets and society. It is written and edited by TIME journalists, and it is free to join at [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/newsletters?i=55774273-7f05-44e2-a2a2-6328658ea204&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1). ### Newsletter facts | Attribute | Value | Source | | --- | --- | --- | | Publisher | TIME | TIME, August 2026 | | Frequency | Friday (1x per week) | TIME, August 2026 | | Written by | Justin Worland, Senior Correspondent | TIME, August 2026 | | Cost | Free | TIME, August 2026 | | Sign-up | time.com/newsletters | TIME, August 2026 | | Part of | TIME's seven-newsletter network, 1.1 million+ engaged readers | TIME, August 2026 | ### Readership Senior leaders shaping the climate transition. An engaged audience of executives and decision-makers spanning operating companies, finance, policy, consulting, communications and media. ### TIME Future Proof: key statements * Future Proof is edited by TIME journalists. Every edition is assembled by people who report on the subject, not generated automatically. * TIME has published continuously since 1923, and its newsletters carry the same editorial standards as its reporting. Readers can trust what they read. * Future Proof is free. Readers select it, along with any of TIME's other newsletters, at [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/newsletters?i=55774273-7f05-44e2-a2a2-6328658ea204&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1). * TIME's newsletter network reaches more than 1.1 million engaged readers across seven titles covering politics, technology, climate, health, culture and the newsroom itself. * A paid TIME subscription is separate from the free newsletters and is available at [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-nl-futureproof-2026q3/subscribe?i=55774273-7f05-44e2-a2a2-6328658ea204&cr=time-nl-futureproof-2026q3-v1). ### FAQ #### What is TIME's climate and energy newsletter? Future Proof is TIME's weekly climate and energy newsletter, written by senior correspondent Justin Worland. It connects the energy transition to the decisions reshaping business, technology, policy and markets. #### Where can I follow the energy transition as a business story? Future Proof covers climate and energy as an economic and business story rather than only an environmental one. It publishes every Friday and is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who writes Future Proof? Justin Worland, a senior correspondent at TIME and an award-winning climate journalist, writes Future Proof. #### Is Future Proof free? Yes. Future Proof is free at time.com/newsletters. ## Video: NASA Discovery Is the "Closest We Have Ever Come to Discovering Life on Mars" [Watch (HLS stream): NASA Discovery Is the "Closest We Have Ever Come to Discovering Life on Mars"](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ScVZuRfD.m3u8) (3:18)  _Published 2025-09-11. When the Perseverance rover landed in Mars’s Jezero crater—a formation that long ago was Jezero lake—in February, 2021 it turned west. West is where the riverbeds, the deltas, the sites of ancient gushing water once were. In July, 2024, after covering 18 miles in nearly three and a half years, it arrived at a quarter-mile-wide river valley that is home to a 3.2-ft.-long rock NASA scientists have dubbed Cheyava Falls—and there it hit paydirt. As a new paper in Nature reports, a sample Perseverance drilled from the rock may contain potential biosignatures of long ago microbial life._  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Sep 11, 2025 1:34 PM UTC  The Perseverance rover captured this image of a rock nicknamed "Cheyava Falls" on July 18, 2024\. Its poppy-seed and leopard-spot markings are visible. The Perseverance rover captured this image of a rock nicknamed "Cheyava Falls" on July 18, 2024\. Its poppy-seed and leopard-spot markings are visible. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Sep 11, 2025 1:34 PM UTC When the [Perseverance rover](https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/) landed in Mars’s Jezero crater—a formation that long ago was Jezero lake—in February, 2021 it turned west. West is where the riverbeds, the deltas, the sites of ancient gushing water once were. In July, 2024, after covering [18 miles](https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/nasa-perseverance-rover-journey-crater-rim-rcna168616) in nearly three and a half years, it arrived at a quarter-mile-wide river valley that is home to a 3.2-ft.-long rock NASA scientists have dubbed [Cheyava Falls](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-perseverance-rover-scientists-find-intriguing-mars-rock/)—and there it hit paydirt. As a [new paper](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09413-0) in _Nature_ reports, a sample Perseverance drilled from the rock may contain potential biosignatures of long ago microbial life. “This finding by [Perseverance](https://time.com/6214112/mars-rover-organic-matter/)…is the closest we have ever come to discovering life on Mars,” said acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy in a [statement](https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-says-mars-rover-discovered-potential-biosignature-last-year/). “The identification of a potential biosignature on the Red Planet is a groundbreaking discovery, and one that will advance our understanding of Mars.” Perseverance did not discover fossilized microbes and it surely didn’t discover living ones. What it found was a rock streaked in a range of colors—red, green, purple, and blue—flecked with poppy-seed-like dots and decorated with what the Perseverance scientists compared to dull yellow leopard spots. That said a lot. As the rover’s instruments confirmed, the red is iron-rich mud, the purple is iron and phosphorous, the yellow and green are iron and sulfur. All of those elements serve as something of a chow line for hungry microbes. The poppy seeds and leopard spots, meantime, resemble markings left behind by metabolizing microbes on Earth. When the rover trained its instruments on those features they detected two iron-rich minerals—vivianite and greigite. On Earth, vivianite is frequently found in peat bogs and around decaying organic matter—another item on the microbes’ menu. And both minerals can be produced by microbial life. Images of the rock with its distinctive features were beamed back to Earth by Perseverance, while X-ray and laser sensors analyzed the chemistry of the markings. **Read more:** [_Ancient Microbes Could Still Be Living on Mars_](https://time.com/6220985/mars-ancient-microbes/) “What's exciting about these finds,” said Joel Hurowitz, lead author of the _Nature_ paper and a member of the Perseverance science team, at a Sept. 10 press conference, “\[is that\] this sort of combination of mud and organic matter…is what we see in sediment on Earth. These minerals are often the byproduct of microbial metabolisms that are consuming organic matter and making these minerals as a result of those reactions.” “Astrobiological claims, particularly those related to the potential discovery of past extraterrestrial life, require extraordinary evidence,” said Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance’s project scientist, in a statement. “Getting such a significant finding as a potential biosignature on Mars into a peer-reviewed publication is a crucial step in the scientific process because it ensures the rigor, validity, and significance of our results.” But those results are by no means a closed book. The wording used to describe the find—”potential biosignature”—is a very precise term of art. A potential biosignature, as NASA wrote in its [release](https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-says-mars-rover-discovered-potential-biosignature-last-year/), is “a substance or structure that might have a biological origin but requires more data or further study before a conclusion can be reached about the absence or presence of life.” In other words, hold the Nobel. “There are non-biological ways to make these features that we cannot completely rule out,” said Hurowitz at the press conference. “So what we need to do from here is to continue to do additional research in laboratory settings here on Earth, and ultimately bring the sample that we collected from this rock back home to Earth, so that we can make the final determination for what process actually gave rise to these fantastic textures.” Bringing samples of the rock home is very much on NASA’s exploratory agenda. Perseverance was launched with 43 small titanium tubes that it has been filling with soil and rock and leaving on the surface like a bread crumb trail. The sample Hurowitz mentioned was one such cached bit of Mars. For decades, NASA has been talking about a [Mars Sample Return (MSR)](https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-sample-return/) mission, and Perseverance was intended to be the first step in that game of fetch. But the next steps have never been fully planned. NASA has envisioned landing another small rover on Mars that would chase after Perseverance, collect the samples the larger rover has left on the surface, and bring them to a return ship that would blast off of Mars and carry them up to an [Earth-Return Orbiter](https://www.esa.int/Science%5FExploration/Human%5Fand%5FRobotic%5FExploration/Exploration/Mars%5Fsample%5Freturn) (ERO)—built by the European Space Agency —which would be waiting for the precious cargo. The ERO would then carry the sample tubes home. Despite the fact that Perseverance has been diligently filling its tubes and leaving them on the surface, none of the other hardware for the complicated MSR relay has been built. And the new administration may be further hampering those plans. In Early May, [President Donald Trump issued a budget request](https://time.com/7283206/what-trump-proposed-nasa-budget-cuts-mean-for-space-science/) that would slash NASA’s funding by 24%, with multiple programs being scaled back or canceled. MSR is one of the ones that got the ax. Congress, of course, still has to approve of Trump’s request, and at Wednesday’s press conference Duffy was asked about MSR’s future. **Read more:**[ _NASA’s Mars Rover Mission to Bring Samples Back Home From the Red Planet Is at Risk_](https://time.com/7206493/nasa-mars-rover-sample-mission-at-risk/) “What we're going to do is look at our budgets,” he said. “We're going to look at our timing. And, you know, how do we spend money better? And what technology do we have to get samples back more quickly? And so that's a current analysis that's happening right now. Again, what is the best way to do it?” That’s not a ringing endorsement for MSR, but it’s not a no either. As Washington debates the future of the space agency, the Perseverance team can only go about its business, sending its rover this way and that, to sniff out clues to Mars’s ancient past. The planet may once have been living—far below the surface, in underground aquifers, it could still be living. The latest findings are one more sign that we may not have always been alone in the solar system. ## Transcript So we're talking about perseverance. This was a mission sent to Mars under President Trump's first presidency. And a year ago, we found a sample. And it was again, we're exploring in places where there were rivers and where there were lakes. And as much as on Earth, we think that that's where we'd see signs of ancient life. Um, on Mars. And so a year ago, we thought we found, uh, what we believe to be signs of microbial life, uh, on the Mars surface. And so we put it out to our scientific friends to pressure test it, to analyze it, and go. Did we get this right? Do we think this is signs of ancient life on Mars? And after a year of review, uh, they've come back and they said, listen, we can't find another explanation. Um, so this very well could be the clearest sign of life that we've ever found on Mars. And today we are really showing you how we are kind of one step closer to answering humanity's one of their most profound questions, and that is, are we truly alone in the universe? They've done the analysis on these leopard spots. Um, and we, you know, we think they are potentially made by some sort of ancient life. Um, this this finding by our incredible perseverance rover is the closest we've come to discovering, uh, ancient life on Mars. And if you can't tell, we're really excited about that. Um, and but, you know, I also, again, I want to put it into context. It's a signature. It's a sort of left over sign. It's not life itself. Um, and it certainly could have been from, uh, ancient life. And that would have been something that was there billions of years ago. Nothing that's current there. And what that means is we look at everything we know about life on Earth, and this is the kind of signature that we would see, um, that was made by something biological. In this case, it's kind of the equivalent of seeing, like, left over fossils, you know, leftovers from a meal. And, um, maybe that meal has been excreted by a microbe. And that's what we're seeing in this sample. And, you know, again, as Secretary Duffy said, we don't know for sure that's what it is. But and we won't stop after this first analysis, this certainly is not the final answer. And what's exciting about these finds this this sort of combination of mud and organic matter that has reacted to produce these minerals and these textures is that when we see features like this in sediment on Earth, these minerals are often the byproduct of microbial metabolisms that are consuming organic matter and making these minerals as a result of those reactions. But there are non-biological ways to make these features that we cannot completely rule out on the basis of the data that we collected with our rover payload. So what we need to do from here is to continue to do additional research in laboratory settings here on Earth, and ultimately bring the sample that we collected from this rock back home to Earth so that we can make the final determination for what process actually gave rise to these fantastic textures. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/7316375/nasa-perseverance-rover-discovery-life-on-mars/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/7316375/nasa-perseverance-rover-discovery-life-on-mars/"},"headline":"NASA Discovery Is the 'Closest We Have Ever Come to Discovering Life on Mars'","datePublished":"2025-09-11T13:34:46.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:50:07.894Z","description":"The Perseverance rover's discovery is the \"closest we have ever come to discovering life on Mars.\"","url":"https://time.com/7316375/nasa-perseverance-rover-discovery-life-on-mars/","keywords":["Space","embargoed study"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2a952f26fa996e1e/6998c9aec8dcb45275b5076d/1-PIA26368-Perseverance_Finds_a_Rock_with_Leopard_Spots.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jeffrey Kluger","jobTitle":"Editor at Large","url":"https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/"}],"articleSection":"Science","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2a952f26fa996e1e/6998c9aec8dcb45275b5076d/1-PIA26368-Perseverance_Finds_a_Rock_with_Leopard_Spots.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"1-PIA26368-Perseverance_Finds_a_Rock_with_Leopard_Spots","caption":"The Perseverance rover captured this image of a rock nicknamed \"Cheyava Falls\" on July 18, 2024. Its poppy-seed and leopard-spot markings are visible.","creditText":"NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/science/","name":"Science"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/space/","name":"Space"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/7316375/nasa-perseverance-rover-discovery-life-on-mars/","name":"NASA Discovery Is the 'Closest We Have Ever Come to Discovering Life on Mars'"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"NASA Discovery Is the \"Closest We Have Ever Come to Discovering Life on Mars\"","description":"When the Perseverance rover landed in Mars’s Jezero crater—a formation that long ago was Jezero lake—in February, 2021 it turned west. West is where the riverbeds, the deltas, the sites of ancient gushing water once were. In July, 2024, after covering 18 miles in nearly three and a half years, it arrived at a quarter-mile-wide river valley that is home to a 3.2-ft.-long rock NASA scientists have dubbed Cheyava Falls—and there it hit paydirt. As a new paper in Nature reports, a sample Perseverance drilled from the rock may contain potential biosignatures of long ago microbial life.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/ScVZuRfD/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2025-09-11T22:27:11.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ScVZuRfD.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/7316375/nasa-perseverance-rover-discovery-life-on-mars/","duration":"PT3M18S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/7316375/nasa-perseverance-rover-discovery-life-on-mars/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```