In the search for extraterrestrial life, few things are more valuable than a scoop of dirt, provided it’s from the right place. NASA’s Perseverance rover has now collected such samples from Mars’ Jezero Crater, a location specifically chosen for its potential to reveal whether the Red Planet once harbored life, according to a new international study.

A new paper released today documents the first soil, airfall dust, and rock fragment samples collected by NASA for return from Mars. We checked in with the UNLV astrobiologist leading the specimen selection team for intel on what the samples so far reveal.

The question of whether Mars ever supported life has captivated the imagination of scientists and the public for decades. Central to the discovery is gaining insight into the past climate of Earth’s neighbor: was the planet warm and wet, with seas and rivers much like those found on our own planet? Or was it frigid and icy, and therefore potentially less prone to supporting life as we know it? A new study finds evidence to support the latter by identifying similarities between soils found on Mars and those of Canada’s Newfoundland, a cold subarctic climate.

A lot of the time, when someone mentions the University of Nevada Las Vegas, they’re speaking of its renowned School of Hospitality, its fast-growing medical school or its Jerry Tarkanian-era men’s basketball teams. But UNLV is also one of the nation’s top research universities, awarded an R1 classification (“very high research activity”) from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Join the Weekly as we peek into the laboratories where world-changing scientific research is ongoing.

Exploring Mars might be a dream for students interested in careers in space. For Libby Hausrath, it’s an exciting point on a career path she chose years ago.

To find evidence of prehistoric microbial life and to better understand the processes that formed the surface of Mars, scientists wish to analyze Martian samples with high-tech lab equipment on Earth. The majority of the samples will be made up of rock. Still, scientists are also interested in studying regolith, or broken rock and dust, not only for what it can reveal about Mars’ geological processes and environment but also help astronauts prepare for some of the difficulties they will encounter. Regolith is fascinating to scientists and engineers because it can impact everything from solar panels to spacesuits.

More than a year and a half after its first flight on Mars, the Ingenuity helicopter has set a new record.

NASA’s Perseverance rover snagged two new samples from the Martian surface on Dec. 2 and 6. But unlike the 15 rock cores collected to date, these newest samples came from a pile of wind-blown sand and dust similar to but smaller than a dune. Now contained in special metal collection tubes, one of these two samples will be considered for deposit on the Martian surface sometime this month as part of the Mars Sample Return campaign.