Jakarta –
Scientists have discovered an ancient lake on Mars. The discovery was made possible thanks to NASA’s Perseverance rover which landed inside the Jezero Crater on the planet Mars, on February 18 2021.
Using the rover’s Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment (RIMFAX) instrument, researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Oslo revealed new clues about how layers of lake sediment formed over time at the crater floor.
“From orbit we can see a collection of different deposits, but we can’t be sure whether what we’re seeing is the original state, or whether we’re seeing the conclusion of a long geological story,” David Paige, first author of the study, RIMFAX co-principal investigator and professor UCLA, quoted from the page Space.
“To find out how these objects form, we need to look below the surface,” he added.
Ancient Lakes Shrink and Form New Geological Features
In new research published in the journal Science Advancesthe research team showed that at some point, the crater filled with water, which then deposited layers of sediment on the bottom of the crater.
The lake then shrank and sediment carried by the rivers that flowed through it formed a huge delta.
As the lake disappeared over time, the sediment in the crater eroded away, forming the geological features visible on the surface today.
How Do Researchers Find Ancient Lakes?
NASA’s rover, which is the size of a car and carries seven scientific instruments, has explored a 48 kilometer wide crater. The rover has studied its geology and atmosphere and collected samples since 2021.
Later, Perseverance soil and rock samples will be brought back to Earth by future expeditions and will be studied to look for evidence of past life.
Between May and December 2022, Perseverance will accelerate from the bottom of the crater towards the delta, a vast expanse of 3 billion year old sediment that, when viewed from orbit, resembles a river delta on Earth.
“As the rover drove into the delta, Perseverance’s Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment, or RIMFAX, instrument fired radar waves downward at 10 centimeter intervals and measured the reflected pulses from a depth of about 20 meters below the surface,” wrote the researcher’s report, quoted from phys.org.
With radar, scientists can see down to the bottom of the sediment to reveal the surface above the floor of a buried crater.
Years of research with ground-penetrating radar and RIMFAX testing on Earth have taught scientists how to read the structure and composition of subsurface layers from their radar reflections.
“It’s exciting to see so much evidence of change in such a small geographic area, allowing us to expand our findings to the scale of the entire crater,” said Paige.
Watch the video “Planet Mars Rotates Faster, Scientists Are Confused”
(do/pal)
2024-01-29 13:00:00
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