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After spending 1,000 days on the Martian floor, NASA’s Perseverance rover has uncovered new particulars concerning the historical past of an historic lake and river delta on the crimson planet.
The brand new insights, detectable because of the rover’s detailed on-the-ground sleuthing, are serving to scientists piece collectively the puzzle of Mars’ mysterious previous, and so they in the end may decide whether or not life ever existed there.
Perseverance and its helicopter companion, Ingenuity, landed in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021, to seek for indicators of historic microbial life.
As a part of the search, the robotic explorer simply accomplished its investigation of a river delta that after fed right into a lake that crammed Jezero Crater billions of years in the past. Alongside the best way, Perseverance has additionally collected 23 rock samples from totally different areas all through the crater and delta.
Every pattern, concerning the dimension of classroom chalk and encased in metallic tubes, could also be returned to Earth sooner or later by NASA and the European Area Company’s joint Mars Pattern Return marketing campaign. Learning the samples on Earth would permit for a extra detailed evaluation utilizing lab gear too unwieldy to ship to Mars aboard the rover.
Scientists shared a number of the insights they have gleaned from Perseverance’s trek throughout Mars on Tuesday on the American Geophysical Union fall assembly in San Francisco.
The rover collects samples by utilizing an abrasion software on its arm to scrape away at Martian rock surfaces after which analyzes the rock’s composition utilizing its Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry, often called PIXL.
A few of Perseverance’s latest rock samples embody silica, a fine-grained mineral that aids within the preservation of historic fossils and natural molecules on Earth. Natural molecules can kind throughout geological and organic processes.
“On Earth, this fine-grained silica is what you usually discover in a location that was as soon as sandy,” mentioned Morgan Cable, deputy principal investigator of PIXL at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a press release. “It’s the type of surroundings the place, on Earth, the stays of historic life could possibly be preserved and located later.”
Among the rocks additionally included iron related to phosphate, a pure supply of the aspect phosphorus that acts as a element of DNA and cell membranes.
Carbonate was additionally detected within the samples. These minerals point out previous water-rich environments, performing like time capsules for the environmental circumstances on Mars from when the rocks initially shaped.
“We picked Jezero Crater as a touchdown web site as a result of orbital imagery confirmed a delta — clear proof that a big lake as soon as crammed the crater. A lake is a probably liveable surroundings, and delta rocks are an ideal surroundings for entombing indicators of historic life as fossils within the geologic document,” mentioned Ken Farley, Perseverance undertaking scientist and professor of geochemistry on the California Institute of Know-how, in a press release. “After thorough exploration, we’ve pieced collectively the crater’s geologic historical past, charting its lake and river section from starting to finish.”
Scientists consider that Jezero Crater shaped when an asteroid slammed into Mars 4 billion years in the past.
Perseverance started its mission by finding out and sampling the crater ground quickly after touchdown. The rover’s detective work helped scientists decide that the crater ground is made from volcanic rock that shaped both resulting from magma that bubbled as much as the floor or volcanic exercise on the Martian floor.
As Perseverance rolled alongside, the rover got here throughout examples of sandstone and mudstone, suggesting {that a} river flowed into the crater tens of millions of years after it shaped. A prime layer of mudstones wealthy with salt is all that is still to indicate {that a} shallow lake crammed the crater, reaching 22 miles (35 kilometers) vast and 100 ft (30 meters) deep, earlier than some climatic shift prompted the lake to evaporate.
Perseverance additionally discovered proof of boulders that originated from elsewhere on Mars and have been deposited throughout the river delta and in the crater by fast-flowing rivers.
“We have been capable of see a broad define of those chapters in Jezero’s historical past in orbital pictures, nevertheless it required getting up shut with Perseverance to actually perceive the timeline intimately,” mentioned Libby Ives, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a press release.
Perseverance’s suite of devices has the power to detect microscopic fossil buildings and the chemical traces left behind by microbial life, however the rover hasn’t detected both one. Nevertheless, the geological proof that the rover has collected to this point paints an attractive image.
“We have now ultimate circumstances for locating indicators of historic life the place we discover carbonates and phosphates, which level to a watery, liveable surroundings, in addition to silica, which is nice at preservation,” Cable mentioned.
And the mission isn’t over but. Subsequent, the rover will examine an space close to the crater’s entrance the place a river flooded throughout the crater ground, abandoning deposits of carbonate that resemble a tub ring.