MARS — After decades of searching for organic compounds on the Red Planet, scientists have finally been successful.<br /><br />NASA announced on Thursday that rock and soil samples taken by the Curiosity rover from Mars' Gale crater has yielded organic molecules believed to be 3 billion years old.<br /><br />Organic molecules refer to chemical compounds that contain carbon. They can come from both living and nonliving sources, and are the chemical building blocks for all life on Earth.<br /><br />Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, or SAM, heated the samples to over a thousand degrees Fahrenheit, releasing small hydrocarbons that may be fragments of bigger, more complex molecules.<br /><br />While the organics could have resulted from biological activity, NASA says they are just as likely to have emerged from geological processes, or from a meteor crashing into the planet.<br /><br />Still, the discovery of the molecules sheds light on the planet's history — painting a picture of an ancient Mars that had favorable conditions for life.<br /><br />It likewise spurs on future explorations, with both NASA and the European Space Agency developing new technologies to search for signs of life.
