Scientists at NASA said Mars may have been able to support life and that the Mars Rover program has found rocks that may contain evidence of something living on the red planet.

A new study published in the journal Nature said some rocks had odd green, blue, black and white dots that may be minerals that are created from microbial activity, The Washington Post reported.

“The sample contains what we believe to be a potential biosignature,” the study stated.

The speckles were determined to be iron phosphate and iron sulfide, and were found with organic carbon, The Associated Press reported.

They are called mudstones and would need to be investigated in person for scientists to confirm their beliefs, study author Joel Hurowitz said.

He called them “probably the most astrobiologically exciting” samples found by the rover Perseverance since its mission started in 2021, the Post reported.

Despite Hurowitz’s beliefs that the spots may indicate ancient life, others warn that the spots may have been created by non-biological processes, meaning by something not living, the AP reported.

Still, SETI Institute’s Janice Bishop and the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Mario Parente called it an “exciting discovery.”

Hurowitz admits that it could mean something other than ancient life.

“That’s part of the reason why we can’t go so far as to say, ‘A-ha, this is proof positive of life,’’’ he told the AP. “All we can say is one of the possible explanations is microbial life, but there could be other ways to make this set of features that we see.”

The AP explained that the rover cannot detect life; instead, it gathers samples using a drill, and keeps them in tubes until samples can be collected by NASA, which it is not able to do so yet. The plan to get to Mars is paused as the agency looks for more economical and faster options.

The sample was Perseverance’s 25th one gathered out of a total of 30 so far.

It was found in a river channel that had carried water into Jezero Crater and was collected last summer, the AP reported.

“There is no evidence of microbes on Mars today, but if any had been present on ancient Mars, they too might have reduced sulfate minerals to form sulfides in such a lake at Jezero Crater,” Bishop and Parente said in an editorial.

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