Mars rock has "leopard spots" only microbes make on Earth, and a wet microscope could settle it (cbc.ca)
Perseverance found the spots in 2024 in the Bright Angel mudstone at Jezero Crater: vivianite rims around greigite cores, the chemical leftovers of a redox reaction that living cells drive on Earth. The sample sits cached, waiting for a Mars Sample Return mission that lands no earlier than the 2030s.
On HN, the loudest objection wasn't that the find is weak but that the test is dodged: NASA, one commenter argued, will never fly the cheap school-grade wet microscope that could prove life outright, because a yes ends the funding for ever-pricier probes.
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