NASA’s Perseverance rover found a new potential setting for Martian life
Now atop Jezero Crater, the robotic explorer found quartz indicative of habitable environments and possibly the oldest rocks yet seen in the solar system.
WASHINGTON D.C. — The Perseverance Rover on Mars can have stumbled upon the oldest rocks humans have ever seen and, perchance, evidence of a brand new setting that ancient Martian organisms may perhaps have inhabited, in the event that they ever existed.
“Or not it is basically thought to be one of many vital foremost exciting things that this mission is going to do, is to be taking a seriously look into rocks that were formed so early in the history of the solar system,” said Caltech geochemist Kenneth Farley in due course of a December 12 news briefing at a gathering of the American Geophysical Union. “Almost the break of day of the solar system.”
Maybe the oldest rocks we’ve seen
For most of its mission, Perseverance has been poking around within Jezero Crater, probing and sampling rocks that are most likely about three.7 billion years old (SN: 2/17/23). The rocks on the rim, alternatively, are most likely an enormous deal older, having been uplifted by the impact that created the crater.
On December eleven — following a slippery, three-month-long, five hundred-meter climb from the crater floor — the robotic explorer eventually surmounted that crater’s rim, after weeks of studying the high area’s geology. And all that exploration appears to have paid off.
“The rocks that we are the fact is exploring are likely older than four billion years,” said Farley, who's also project scientist for the Mars 2020 Mission that brought the rover to the planet. “These are amongst the oldest rocks in the solar system, and that they’re older than any rocks that exist on Earth.” A portion of the explanation on the back of it be that an enormous deal of Earth’s ancient surface has been destroyed at subduction zones, where one tectonic plate plunges beneath every other to descend into the mantle (SN: 1/13/21).
At the pinnacle of the crater, Perseverance traveled through a local referred to as the P.c. Turquino Hills, where it captured images of a selection outcrops. “What we found in these relatively small outcrops is that the rocks are extremely diverse, and it appears that each and every thought to be one of many vital hills that make up the P.c. Turquino Hills have a distinct assemblage of largely igneous minerals, with some alteration by water,” Farley said. “These are likely pieces of the earliest crust of Mars.”
Instruments aboard Perseverance isn't going to precisely date the rocks. As a replacement, researchers are basing their age estimates on their current working out of the crater’s formation and Mars’ history. “They'll well be our best estimates, but they're just estimates,” Farley said. “Or not it is thought to be one of many vital explanations why we need to do sample return.”
If the newly encountered Martian rocks are really that old, they could contain important points about how rocky planets like Mars and Earth evolved in their infancy (SN: three/Sixteen/17). “For us to grab how rocky planets behave in that first, say, 1/2 of one billion years, [we] can’t do it from Earth,” Farley said.
A brand new potential setting for Martian life
Ancient rocks weren’t all that Perseverance found in the P.c. Turquino Hills. The rover also found out evidence of an absolutely new habitable setting for conceivable Martian life (SN: 7/15/24): a field of “brilliant white, cantaloupe-sized [stones], and the instruments aboard the rover confirm that these cobbles are pure quartz,” Farley said. “This has never been seen before” on Mars.
Quartz forms in places where hot fluids circulate through rocks, and every now after which at temperatures that are habitable. These rocks can have formed in a setting akin to a hot spring, and we know those environments can enhance life on Earth, so per chance something similar once existed on Mars, Farley said. “Or not it's a potentially habitable environment that’s totally different from the habitable environments that Perseverance investigated on the crater floor.”
Based on Farley, the goal is to now seek for quartz where it be a ways still embedded in the Martian surface, so it is able to well well be sampled. “Neither our drill nor our abrader can in actuality operate on such loose, [cobblestone-sized rocks],” Farley said. “The rock would just move out of how if we work on it.” Finding more straightforward-to-access quartz may possibly also lend a hand researchers better know the way the mineral fits into the rest of the Martian rock record.
Next stop, Witch Hazel Hill
Moving on from the P.c. Turquino Hills, Perseverance will spend the subsequent six months exploring a local which is referred to as Witch Hazel Hill. Located away from the crater, the rocks at Witch Hazel Hill should be more representative of the geology of the broader region beyond, said planetary scientist and geologist Candice Bedford of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., on the news briefing.
What’s more, NASA’s Mars orbiters have already identified extensive outcropping of layered rocks at Witch Hazel Hill. “As geologists we love layered outcrops,” Bedford said. “For us, every layer preserved is like, as we glance down through that, it’s like turning a [page in the book] of Martian history.”
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