NASA
–
Illustration of the Jezero Crater as seen billions of years ago on Mars, when it was still a lake.
–
Nationalgeographic.co.id – An update report on the preliminary results of the Mars 2020 rover mission shows signs of continued interaction of water at the bottom of the Jezero crater, Planet Mars. These findings are new evidence that can make Planet Mars as a habitable planet. The findings will be presented at the annual meeting Geological Society of America’s Connects 2021 in Portland, Oregon on Sunday, October 10, 2021.
As you know, since the Perseverance rover landed in the Jezero crater on Mars in February, the rover and its team of scientists on Earth have been hard at work exploring the bottom of the crater that was once an ancient lake. Perseverance and the Mars 2020 mission searched for signs of ancient life on Mars and prepared samples that could be returned for further analysis on Earth.
With a range of instruments on-board High-tech from Perseverance, the scientific team has analyzed the crater bedrock. The find is currently being interpreted as igneous rock, possibly volcanic lava flows.
Katie Stack Morgan, Mars 2020 Deputy Project Scientist and research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) will present the report at the annual meeting. He said the Jezero crater is one of the few ancient crater lake sites on Mars that appears to have extraordinary sedimentary deposits as well as volcanic deposits that could help us establish the geological timescale of Mars.
Also Read: The fate of the Earth, the face of Mars is formed from the flood of its lakes
NASA
–
Perseverence Rovers took a selfie over the rock as it drilled its core.
–
“The idea that this could be a volcanic rock is very attractive to us from a sample return perspective because igneous rocks are great for getting accurate age dates,” Morgan said.
He explained that the system of lakes and rivers flowing into the Jezero crater was probably active around 3.8–3.6 billion years ago. But the ability to directly date rocks in a laboratory on Earth would provide the first definitive insight into the possible time windows Mars may have that could make it a habitable planet.
Uses a Perseverance abrasive tool that scrapes the top surface of the stone to reveal the stone and its texture. The team found that the crater floor appeared to be composed of coarse-grained igneous minerals and that there were also various salts in the rocks. Observations also showed that the water caused extensive weathering and alteration of the crater floor, meaning that the rock was exposed to water for a significant period of time.
After using the installed tools to analyze the characteristics of the crater floor, the next phase is Perseverance collecting rock samples using its drill features. However, after Perseverance completed its first attempt at drilling, the core sample tube was empty. The rock is likely weakened by the interaction with water so the vibrations and forces from the Perseverance drill destroy the sample.
Also Read: By Measuring Earthquakes, Researchers Try to Dissect the Contents of Planet Mars
THIS
–
The remains of an ancient delta on the edge of the Jezero Crater.
–
“We spent a few days looking at the rover thinking the core might have come off. Then we looked back at the borehole thinking it might never make it out of the hole. All these searches turned out to be empty. In the end we concluded that the core was destroyed. while drilling,” Morgan said.
The scientists then targeted another rock that appeared to be more resistant to weathering, and Perseverance was able to collect two core samples. The sample is the first in Perseverence’s sample collection. Cache Perseverance samples will be part of multi-spacecraft handoff, still under development, which is expected to be returned to Earth in the early 2030s. From there, scientists in laboratories on Earth will date and analyze rocks to see if there might be signs of ancient Martian life.
“The rocks at the bottom of the crater were not initially envisioned as the primary astrobiological targets of such missions, but Mars always surprises us when we look closely. We were delighted to find that even these rocks have undergone ongoing interactions with water and can be inhabited by Martian microbes. ancient,” Morgan said.
PROMOTED CONTENT
Featured Videos
– .
