NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has detected the largest organic (carbon-containing) molecules ever found on the red planet. The ...

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) mission has detected amino acids in the largest asteroid sample ever collected in space, ...

The molecules may be remnants of fatty acids, which form cell membranes in Earth’s organisms, though they might have formed through a non-biological process ...

"Notably, non-biological processes typically make shorter fatty acids, with less than 12 carbons," NASA noted. Hardy Martian life could have also once thrived well beyond the reach of NASA's ...

The Mars Curiosity rover’s onboard mini-lab has helped confirm the existence of the largest organic molecules ever found on the Red Planet. The trio of long-chain compounds preserved in Martian soil ...

The Curiosity rover detected the largest organic molecules to date on Mars, which may be fragments of fatty acids, or some of ...

NASA’s Perseverance rover is already collecting ... "If these are breakdown products from carboxylic acids, then we are seeing something very exciting indeed," said Monica Grady, a planetary ...

Curiosity has been exploring the Gale Crater on Mars since 2012 and its sample with the fatty acid molecules were found in a sample collected from an area called 'Yellowknife Bay' in 2013. Scientists ...

Credit: NASA/Dan Gallagher It's possible that the large ... showing that they could have come from the breakdown of fatty acids entombed in the clay-rich sedimentary materials over 3.7 billion ...

Scientists used the Sample Analysis at Mars (Sam) instrument on the NASA rover to make their discovery. Scientists were actually looking for evidence of amino acids, which are the building blocks ...