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NASA Mars rover Perseverance
NOS Nieuws•gisteren, 05:21
NASA’s Perseverance rover has collected data confirming the existence of ancient lake sediments on Mars. This emerges from a study published yesterday. This rock is formed by the deposition of sand and mud carried by water in the so-called Jezero Crater.
Previously, based on images from space, it was assumed that there must once have been water on Mars, in which microorganisms may have lived. This has now been confirmed using ground-penetrating radar observations from Perseverance.
The results confirm what previous studies have long suspected: that cold, dry and lifeless Mars was once warm, wet and possibly habitable for humans.
In 2022, the rover performed several scans while traveling across the crater floor toward an adjacent area. Viewed from space, this area resembles dry river deltas like those on Earth, according to joint research by the Universities of California and Oslo.
Soundings from the rover’s RIMFAX radar instrument gave scientists a look underground. This created a cross section of rock layers up to 20 meters deep.
Three billion years old
These layers gave scientists evidence that a river once flowed to the crater, much like lakes do on Earth. Scientists look forward to a detailed study of the sediment in the crater, which is believed to have been formed around three billion years ago.
In 2022, Perseverance surprised scientists by analyzing soil samples. The soil on the Red Planet at the research site appears to have a different composition than expected.
Since there was water in this area 3.5 billion years ago, the researchers suspected that the soil here would consist of sediments. Instead, Perseverance encountered lava rock.
However, the results of the two studies do not necessarily contradict each other. Because the volcanic rock showed signs of changes due to the action of water. Scientists concluded in 2022 that sediment may have eroded in these locations.
And the radar measurements reported yesterday actually show that there are signs of erosion before and after the formation of the sediment layers on the western side of the crater. According to one of the scientists, this is evidence of a complex geological history.
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