2023-12-15 10:45:21
NASA’s Perseverance robotic rover, which has been roaming and exploring the surface of Mars since arriving here in February 2021, has completed its journey through what was once a river system with a major river and lake, including a delta river. Some of the samples he has taken from this region could harbor traces of past life.
The samples will be transported to Earth on a future mission to be analyzed in the most complete and advanced astrobiology laboratories in the world.
Initial analyzes carried out by Perseverance itself reveal, for example, that one of the samples contains a large amount of fine-grained silica, a material known to preserve ancient fossils on Earth. Another sample contains a significant amount of phosphate, which is often associated with life as we know it. Both samples are also rich in carbonate, which can preserve a record of the environmental conditions from when the rock formed.
Much of the river system is inside the immense Jezero crater.
This crater was formed by the impact of an asteroid almost four billion years ago. As expected, the soil shows signs of having experienced very high temperatures at that time.
In this false-color photo of Jezero Crater on Mars, green represents carbonates, which are minerals that form in water-rich environments. (Image: NASA JPL/Caltech/MSSS/JHU-APL)
Little by little, the land settled and cooled. Judging by the findings made by Perseverance during its exploration, the first river after the creation of the crater reached it several hundred million years after the impact. The lake apparently grew to have a diameter of 35 kilometers and a depth of about 30 meters.
Later, a rapidly and energetically moving flow of water carried stones with it from outside Jezero, distributing them across the upper part of the delta and into other areas of the crater. Today, it is still possible to find and recognize pebbles of this kind in the region. (Source: NCYT from Amazings)
#Perseverance #robot #finishes #crossing #ancient #Martian #river