00:03Right now, NASA's Perseverance rover is looking for signs of life on Mars after having traveled
00:08millions of miles to get there. But now experts are saying that perhaps the best place to help
00:13us understand what Mars was like if and when it had life and water might be right here on Earth.
00:17This is Lake Salda in Turkey. According to NASA, the minerals and rocks found here have
00:22a surprisingly similar composition to those found on Mars, specifically those found near
00:27the Dezero crater, which was once thought to be flooded with water and where Perseverance is
00:31currently roving, which is why scientists are now collecting samples from Lake Salda,
00:35all in the hopes they will help provide better ways of detecting microbial life on the Martian
00:39surface. Here's Thomas Zerukin, Associate Administrator for NASA's Science Mission
00:43Directorate, to explain. Well, Lake Salda during that entire time will serve as a powerful analog
00:50in which we can learn and interrogate, kind of come up with ideas that we can go try at Lake
00:56Salda
00:56before we use it at Perseverance, or when we find something at Perseverance, we can go back
01:03to look at Lake Salda, to really look at both processes, but also similarities, but equally
01:09importantly, differences that are really between Perseverance and Lake Salda.
01:14Perseverance is conducting experiments while wandering around Mars, but it's also gathering
01:19and storing samples, which will be collected by another mission sometime in the next 10 years.
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