{"id":61586,"date":"2025-09-13T12:07:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T12:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/61586\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T12:07:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T12:07:10","slug":"dr-sean-jordan-was-there-ancient-life-on-mars-my-dcu-team-are-doing-our-bit-to-assess-nasas-latest-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/61586\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr Se\u00e1n Jordan: Was there ancient life on Mars? My DCU team are doing our bit to assess Nasa\u2019s latest discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Return mission is key to confirming whether we once had neighbours in our solar system\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Leopard spots on a reddish rock nicknamed 'Cheyava Falls' in Mars\u2019 Jezero Crater discovered by Nasa\u2019s Perseverance rover in July 2024. Photo: Nasa\/via AP\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/SPACE Mars 180.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Leopard spots on a reddish rock nicknamed &#8216;Cheyava Falls&#8217; in Mars\u2019 Jezero Crater discovered by Nasa\u2019s Perseverance rover in July 2024. Photo: Nasa\/via AP<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">On Wednesday, Nasa announced that the Perseverance rover had identified potential biosignatures \u2013 signs of ancient life \u2013 on Mars.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">These signs are in the form of tiny circular marks, nicknamed \u201cleopard spots\u201d, on the surface of a 3.5 billion-year-old mudstone that are reminiscent of traces left behind by microbial life on Earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Return mission is key to confirming whether we once had neighbours in our solar system Leopard spots on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61587,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[270],"tags":[8531,18,19,17,1024,133,451],"class_list":{"0":"post-61586","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-dcu","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-nasa","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-space"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}