NASA Mars Curiosity Rover Detects Life-Giving Nitrogen on the Red Planet

The Mars Curiosity rover may have found something unusual on Mars; it's discovered fixed forms of nitrogen, which suggest that there may have been a nitrogen cycle sometime in Mars' past, just like on Earth.

"The presence of nitrogen-bearing compounds in the Martian soil means the existence of a source of biochemically accessible nitrogen, and suggest that it could be a nitrogen cycle sometime along the evolution of Mars as a planet," said Javier Martin-Torres, one of the several researchers who discovered the fixed nitrogen on Mars, in a news release.

The researchers detected the nitrogen's presence through analyses of samples taken at three points on Mars. The analyses were made by the instrument SAM (Sample Analysis on Mars) onboard the rover Curiosity. Two of the samples came from drilling at a place called Sheepbed mudstone. The third sample is generally believed to be representative of the global Martian dust.

"It has been established that the nitrates, which is a form of nitrogen, comes from fixation of atmospheric diatomic nitrogen in the atmosphere during meteorite impacts, which is consistent with the data that we obtained through the SAM analyses, so this may be the main source of fixed nitrogen on Mars," said Martin-Torres.

The findings reveal that nitrogen is indeed present on Mars. This could mean that Mars was habitable in the past, since nitrogen is a basic requirement for life as we know it.

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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