In a 3.5-billion-year-old clay-rich rock from Gale Crater, NASA’s Curiosity rover identified 21 carbon-based molecules — including a nitrogen-bearing ring structure linked to the chemistry that can precede RNA and DNA — showing that ancient Martian sedime

NASA’s Curiosity rover has added a more detailed layer to one of the hardest questions in Mars science: not whether ancient Mars was ever habitable, but how much chemical evidence can survive long enough for a rover to find it. In a paper published in Nature Communications on 21 April 2026, Amy J. Williams of […] The post In a 3.5-billion-year-old clay-rich rock from Gale Crater, NASA’s Curiosity rover identified 21 carbon-based molecules — including a nitrogen-bearing ring structure linked to the chemistry that can precede RNA and DNA — showing that ancient Martian sediments can preserve surprisingly complex organic chemistry for billions of years. appeared first on Space Daily .