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NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance has collected data confirming the existence of ancient water-deposited sediments. This water once filled a huge basin on Mars, the Jerezo Crater. This emerges from a new scientific study.
The results from Perseverance’s ground-penetrating radar confirm previous images from space and other data, leading scientists to suspect that parts of Mars were once covered in water and may have harbored microorganisms.
The six-wheeled, car-sized rover conducted the subsurface scans in 2022 as the vehicle traveled across the surface of Mars. The radar instrument on board Perseverance allowed scientists to examine rock layers up to a depth of twenty meters.
These rock layers provided clear evidence that the water-borne bottom sediments in Jerezo Crater were deposited by a river. The results confirm what previous studies have suggested, that cold, dry and lifeless Mars was once warm, wet and possibly habitable.
The research, led by teams from the University of Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Oslo, was published Friday in the journal Science Advances.
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