NASA Rover Drills Delta Region Reveals Early Life on Mars

The United States Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Perseverance rover robot (NASA) will begin climbing in the delta region of the Jazero Crater on Mars.

In a NASA report, Tuesday (17/5), the six-wheeled robot is reported to have traveled to take samples of suspected ancient microbes and organics.

The research, published in the journal Science, in October, suggests that water had flowed into the Jezero crater about 3.7 billion years ago. Experts predict that there was once life there.

In the delta, NASA also identified boulders up to 1 meter wide and possibly weighing up to a tonne. The rock is covered in layers of clay and mudstone that could potentially help preserve ancient animals.

In its mission, Perseverance will collect some rocks and return to Earth in the 2030s, so that they can be studied in more detail.

“The delta at Jezero Crater is a key astrobiological target for Perseverance,” said project scientist deputy Katie Stack Morgan. The Independent.

Perseverance made a landing in the center of Jezero Crater on Mars 45 kilometers wide on February 18, 2021.

Long before that, Perseverance had tested its tools and instruments, flown experimental mini-helicopters, and collected general mapping of the surroundings.

But the main goal of the robot’s trip to the Red Planet is to study the delta crater consisting of a large mound of sediment in the western region of Jazero. BBC.

In the case of the Jezero Crater, experts say it is a reservoir of water resembling a crater-sized lake, which existed billions of years ago.

Until now no one knows whether life ever began on Mars. But if that ever happens, the three or four rocks Perseverance chooses to drill and deposit on the way back to the crater bottom could prove to be a testament to that.

To conclude the existence of life on Mars, the research team had to wait for the rover’s rock collection to be brought home for investigations that can only be done in a laboratory.

In a study of the Martian samples brought in last December, the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument aboard Perseverance helped locate organic matter found not only in the interior of the sample rock but also in dust in other rocks.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory reports the bedrock from the crater has interacted with the water “several times over thousands of years”.

(can/mik)

[Gambas:Video CNN]

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