They had never seen anything like it before – on the entire surface of Mars.
shake the reed
NASA’s Perseverance rover has found something unlike anything else discovered on the Red Planet: a zebra-striped rock that sticks out like a sore thumb in the dusty, red landscape of the planet.
The rover found the unusual stone, which is about 7.8 inches wide, last week. According to NASA in a statement about the discovery:While the spacecraft was exploring Jezero Crater, located north of the planet’s equator and believed to have been Site of an ancient lake and river delta.
“The science team believes this rock has a texture unlike any seen before in Jezero Crater, and perhaps on Mars as a whole,” the space agency said in a statement. “Our knowledge of its chemical composition is limited, but early interpretations suggest that igneous and/or metamorphic processes may have created its streaks.”
Researchers now call the rock “Freya’s Castle” – a reference to Rugged summit of the Grand Canyon — and they assume it came from somewhere higher up, according to NASA. Basically, these loose rocks just rolled up there and didn’t have any algae on them.
stone alone
Freya’s Castle isn’t the only strange rock Perseverance has found in the crater this year. Earlier this summer, the rover stumbled upon a strange rocky boulder. arrow shaped board It contains tiny “tiger spots” that may hold tantalizing evidence of microbes from billions of years ago, when scientists believe there may have been water on Mars.
Perseverance took a sample of that rock, now called Chiwafa Falls, for further analysis. The rover also found two other rocks, also called Chiwafa Falls.Atoko point“And “Bunsen Peak,“ Both may hold more evidence of Mars’ early history.
All of these are amazing discoveries for the Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars in 2021 and His current mission is to find any evidence of alien microbes. which may have flourished on Mars when it was wetter and warmer.
NASA hopes that the samples collected by the rover will be sent back to Earth for further analysis as part of the troubled Mars Sample Return Mission, in the hope that the data will tell us more about the climate of Mars billions of years ago, and what happened to make the planet so cold and desolate.
Until then, Perseverance will spare no effort.
More about Mars: Astronomers discover that Mars appears to be missing a moon
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