Welp. Martians could’ve actually been real, y’all.

Martian rocks excavated by NASA’s Perseverance rover in recent years contain the kind of organic molecules that are the foundation for life as we know it, according to a pair of new studies published in Science and Science Advances.

☝️ First things first… This discovery doesn’t necessarily confirm that life was on Mars (yet). Perseverance doesn’t have the proper instruments to tell if the organic molecules it found came from ancient life, or just from abiotic geological processes.

But here’s the key takeaway: the rock samples do contain the right chemical recipe to reveal evidence of ancient Martian life – if it ever existed – once they’re examined back on Earth, per the studies’ authors. Which, given the complications it poses, we can safely expect to happen sometime in the 2030s.

🪐 Big picture: Mars is front-and-center in NASA’s search for extraterrestrial life, due in large part to its many favorable traits. Like Earth, the red planet has polar ice caps, seasonal weather patterns, volcanoes, clouds, canyons, and other recognizable features. There’s also peer-reviewed research showing Mars was warmer, wetter, and had a much thicker atmosphere around the same time life first developed on Earth ~3.7 billion years ago.