Evidence of ancient lake deposits at the floor of Mars’ Jezero Crater offers new hope for finding signs of life in samples collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover.
Perseverance It landed within a 28-mile (45-kilometer) width of Mars on February 18, 2021. Jezero Crater, it is believed that there was once a large lake and river delta area. The rover explores the crater for signs of past life, collecting and storing dozens of traces. sample For future return to Earth.
Researchers from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Oslo used the rover’s Mars Subsurface Experimental Radar Imager (RIMFAX) instrument to discover how Mars’ sediment layers formed over time. revealed new clues about what happened. crater According to the floor statement.
“While we can see a variety of deposits from orbit, we cannot know for sure whether what we are seeing is its original state or whether we are seeing the end of a long geological story. We can’t,” David Page said first. said the study’s author, associate principal investigator at RIMFAX and UCLA professor, in a statement. “You have to look below the surface to see how these things formed.”
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As perseverance travels across the surface, Marsthe RIMFAX instrument sends radar waves downward at 4-inch (10-centimetre) intervals and measures the reflected pulses at a depth of approximately 65.6 feet (20 meters) below the surface to determine the subsurface profile of the crater floor. Create a.
of rim fax The data showed evidence of sediment deposited by water that once filled the crater.It is possible that microorganisms were living within the crater at this point, and if so There was life on Marssediment samples from this area may contain traces of their remains.
Two distinct periods of deposition occurred and formed layers of sediment. crater bottom They appear regular and horizontal, like the strata found on Earth. Due to fluctuations in the lake’s water level, some of the sediment formed a huge delta. perseverance to overcome From May to December 2022, according to the statement.
Radar measurements also show an uneven crater floor beneath the delta, likely due to erosion before the sediment was first deposited. Then, over time, as the lake dried up, the sedimentary layers within the crater eroded away, forming the geological features seen on the surface of Mars today.
“The changes preserved in the rock record are driven by large-scale changes in the Martian environment,” Page said in a statement. “It’s amazing to see so much evidence of change in such a small geographic area. [to] We extend our findings to the scale of the entire crater. ”
Their findings were published today (January 26) in the journal Science Advances.