MARS — Scientists have confirmed that the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer (MOMA) instrument, aboard the European Space Agency's Rosalind Franklin rover, can detect subtle differences in stable molecules that could indicate past life on Mars. The Rosalind Franklin rover is scheduled to begin its search for traces of life in 2030.

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the University of Göttingen, and Côte d'Azur University conducted tests using replicas of the MOMA instrument's capillary tubes. The study successfully separated the chiral forms of pristane (C19H40) and phytane (C20H42), which are hydrocarbons originating from living organisms and found in petroleum on Earth.

Pristane and phytane are chiral molecules, existing in two mirror-image forms called enantiomers. Living organisms typically produce almost exclusively one mirror image of a chiral molecule. In contrast, molecules formed without biological processes generally contain both mirror-image forms in roughly equal amounts.

Guillaume Leseigneur, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and the lead author of the study, said the study was published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. "If life once existed on Mars, then molecules like pristane and phytane represent important molecular biosignatures that could have survived to this day," Leseigneur said.

The research team tested samples from the Murchison meteorite, which fell in Australia in 1969. The Murchison meteorite contained equal amounts of every mirror-image version of pristane and phytane. Researchers concluded that organic molecules in the Murchison meteorite were likely contaminated by fossil fuel pollution during its passage through Earth's atmosphere.

Fatma Yesil Sahan, a co-author and MOMA team member from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, said, "Chiral separation of pristane and phytane requires high instrument sensitivity and measurement accuracy, both of which we show MOMA can achieve." Uwe Meierhenrich, a co-author from Côte d'Azur University, added that "Chirality is a valuable tool in the search for past extraterrestrial life."