Perseverance Gathers Evidence That Mars' Jezero Crater Was Habitable

After landing in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021, NASA's

rover has already traveled more than 13 kilometers above the

, taken more than 300,000 images and collected 14 cylindrical rock samples.

Almost two years of field work on the red planet have allowed us to confirm that Jezero

an environment that could have met the conditions for the appearance of life in the remote past in which Mars did not it was the cold and arid star that it has become.

Three studies are published this Wednesday - two in

and one in

- that provide new revelations about Martian geology.

Long-distance images from Mastcam-Z aboard

show that the lake that covered Jezero included a river delta, a mouth that was structured in three parts: a wedge-shaped upper area, a middle part with a steep slope and a lower one with very thin and flat sediments (a configuration known as a Gilbert-type delta).

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This is a common formation in lakes where the water that comes from a river has the same density as that of the body of water into which it flows.

"In the upper part of the delta, we have identified large boulders up to a meter and a half in size; as the inclination of the delta is very slight (1 to 2 degrees), great energy would be required to move these large rocks," Alberto explains. G. Fairén, researcher at the Center for Astrobiology (CSIC-INTA) in Torrejón de Ardoz and Cornell University.

Water avalanches or glaciers

"We think that they were swept away either by huge punctual avalanches of liquid water, or by glaciers. In any case, since they are located on top of the delta, any of these phenomena had to happen some time after the formation of the delta."

On the other hand, the data from PIXL (the rover's X-ray instrument) confirm that

formed by the solidification of magma and that their appearance also precedes the existence of the lake.

Analysis of the images suggests that these igneous rocks formed through two different processes: one part originated deep underground from slowly cooled magma, the other formed from some kind of volcanic activity in the surface.

Perseverance

has detected in particular a type of rock that contains olivine, a material found in abundance in the Earth's mantle.

"Olivine is a mineral that crystallizes in high-temperature magmas," says Alberto G. Fairén, who has participated in the three studies published on Wednesday.

"At Jezero, olivine crystals formed in the depths and have been exposed by erosion of surface materials."

return to earth

The PIXL data suggest that the large olivine crystals have been exposed to at least two different periods of interaction with water: initially, with carbonated water filling the lake, which dissolved the olivine and precipitated out as carbonates;

much later there were several periods of interaction with small brines that left patches of concentrated salts with fluid evaporation, an alteration that produced amorphous silicates, sulfates, and chlorine salts.

Furthermore, by combining the data from Mastcam-Z and PIXL, the scientists have identified several sedimentary deposits in the delta.

These results point to a long and complex geological evolution, with

.

For example, one of the articles notes that spectroscopic analyzes carried out by SHERLOC (Instrument for Exploration of Habitable Environments with Raman spectroscopy and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) have identified the presence of aromatic organic compounds in the rocks of Jezero,

's ongoing exploration

is the first step in a longer-term mission, Mars Sample Return (MSR), which will bring samples to Earth for analysis in laboratories with equipment that cannot be miniaturized on the mobile robot.

This return to the base is scheduled for 2033. "

the specific temporal sequence of the geological events that occurred in the crater; the sedimentary samples will search for potential indicators of biological activity in Mars in the past, particularly to establish the formation processes of the organic compounds identified", points out Alberto G. Fairén.

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