New Delhi, India

Signs of life on another planet? People of Earth keep fascinating with scientists making strides to answer this question. In the latest significant development, manganese has been observed on Mars by the NASA Curiosity rover at multiple places. However, the rover found more of it in the Gale crater. 

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The deposits were detected by the ChemCam instrument which is onboard the rover. The findings, which have been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets on May 1, suggest that the manganese sediments had formed in a river, delta, or near the shoreline of an ancient lake. 

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Patrick Gasda, of Los Alamos National Laboratory's Space Science and Applications group and lead author on the study, said as quoted by phys.org, "It is difficult for manganese oxide to form on the surface of Mars, so we didn't expect to find it in such high concentrations in a shoreline deposit." 

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"On Earth, these types of deposits happen all the time because of the high oxygen in our atmosphere produced by photosynthetic life, and from microbes that help catalyze those manganese oxidation reactions," he further said. 

"On Mars, we don't have evidence for life, and the mechanism to produce oxygen in Mars's ancient atmosphere is unclear, so how the manganese oxide was formed and concentrated here is really puzzling. These findings point to larger processes occurring in the Martian atmosphere or surface water and show that more work needs to be done to understand oxidation on Mars," Gasda added. 

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While exploring the results, the researchers analysed how manganese could have been enriched in these sands on Mars. They also attempted to find what oxidant could be responsible for the precipitation of manganese in the rocks. The paper compared the findings with the availability of Manganese on Earth. 

On Earth, manganese deposits occur as a result of oxygen in the atmosphere, and the presence of bacteria frequently accelerates this process. Notably, the microbes on Earth can use manganese's many oxidation states as energy for metabolism. 

The higher levels of manganese in the rocks along the lake shore on the Red Planet would have been an important energy source for life if life existed on ancient Mars.