The Phoenix Lander has discovered that Martian soil is rich in nutrients that could have once supported life. The nutrients are just one of many indicators gleaned from the Phoenix Lander since it began collecting and testing soil samples a few weeks ago. The early findings show the presence of ice crystals and nutrients, which point towards the presence of water - the basis for life. Its clear that the soil has clearly interacted with water in the past but its unknown if the interaction occurred at this area or whether it might have happened elsewhere and blown around Mars as dust. While NASA has said that some work remained before the first wet-chemical analysis was fully complete, it is similar to that found in Antarctica’s upper valleys and the salts it contains are another strong indication of the presence of water.
Since 1965 more than 140 molecular species have been detected in space, in interstellar clouds. A large fraction of these molecules is organic or carbon-based. A lot of attention is given to the quest for so-called bio-molecules, especially interstellar amino acids. Amino acids, the building blocks of proteins and therefore key ingredients for the origin of life, have been found in meteorites on Earth, but not yet in interstellar space.
Now scientists have detected a new molecule in space closely related to an amino acid: amino acetonitrile. The organic molecule was found with a 30-meter radio telescope in Spain and two radio interferometers in France and Australia in the Large Molecule Heimat, a giant gas cloud near the galactic center in the constellation Sagittarius. In this source of only 0.3 light-year diameter, which is heated by a deeply embedded newly formed star, most of the interstellar molecules known to date have been found, including the most complex ones such as ethyl alcohol, formaldehyde, formic acid, acetic acid, glycol aldehyde and ethylene glycol.