NASA Rover Spots ‘Enigmatic’ Rock

The Perseverance rover has uncovered a compelling pink rock on Mars that comprises blobs of inexperienced, hinting on the stone’s composition.

The “enigmatic” rock, as NASA described it in a press release, couldn’t be interrogated to the fullest as a result of rover’s devices not having sufficient room to work in. However the options do trace at how they fashioned on an historic, wetter Mars.

Perseverance arrived on Mars in February 2021 with a elementary objective: examine a dried-up river delta on the sting of a multi-billion-year-old lake for signs of ancient microbial life. Mars is the one world in our photo voltaic system the place house companies have energetic landers driving across the planet’s floor, imaging and digging up proof of its historic previous.

Although Mars has far more excessive temperature fluctuations than our planet, and is far more arid, scientists imagine it had giant lakes of liquid water on its floor billions of years in the past. A kind of lakes was in Jezero Crater, by which Perseverance landed three years in the past.

Since then, Perseverance has trekked throughout Jezero’s western edge, imaging the planet and scooping up rock cores and some Martian atmosphere that may ultimately be shipped to Earth, pending a lot of funding—and even more determination.

The fundamental thought behind Perseverance’s astrobiological search is that, if life existed on Mars, it will’ve appeared like a number of the earliest life on Earth: microbes that eked out existence in shallow water. These microbes kind sedimentary concretions—layers of rock—as they go about their lives, which then fossilize in warped, Sol Lewitt-like patterns. These rock fossils are referred to as stromatolites, they usually still form on Earth today. Earlier this yr, a staff of researchers recognized the oldest fossilized photosynthetic structures yet, in 1.75-billion-year-old rock in northern Australia—the identical neck of the woods the place even-more-ancient stromatolites kind.

In July, Perseverance found “leopard spots” on Mars in bands of hematite and calcium sulfate, which NASA scientists imagine might point out that the rock was as soon as mud containing natural compounds.

Now, Perseverance has investigated one other compelling goal: the pink rock with inexperienced spots. Hardly a smoking-gun for alien life, the stone however gives a window into Mars’ ironic irony iron-wealthy previous.

The rock’s redness is probably going as a consequence of oxidized iron, however the Perseverance staff needed to take a more in-depth look. The rover reduce a 2-inch-wide (5-centimeter-wide) round chunk of the rock’s floor utilizing an abrading instrument to see the stone beneath, which has not been eroded or in any other case modified by the windswept circumstances on the Martian floor.

The inexperienced spots within the rock are “comparatively widespread,” in response to the NASA release. They happen when water permeates the iron-rich sediment earlier than it turns into rock, oxidizing the steel and turning it inexperienced. On Earth, microbes can catalyze that response, although it will possibly additionally occur as a consequence of decaying natural matter or interactions between sulfur and iron. Regardless of the trigger, finding out the rock would yield details about Mars’ watery previous, potential life on the planet, or how the planet advanced.

Given the chances, the green-splotched deposit warranted additional investigation. However there wasn’t sufficient house across the rock pattern for Perseverance to unfurl its devices, so the rock’s composition couldn’t be studied in better element.

Hopefully there are extra rocks bearing comparable options in Perseverance’s near-future. The rover is at the moment making its approach up the rim of Jezero Crater, climbing out of its Martian cradle in the direction of some loftier understanding of our arid next-door neighbor.