NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover discovers volcanic rocks in Jezero Crater

Latest

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover discovers volcanic rocks in Jezero Crater

Editor2

August 27, 2022

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover discovers volcanic rocks in Jezero Crater

[ad_1]

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover discovers volcanic rocks in Jezero Crater

Photo : IANS

NASA‘s rover Perseverance has discovered that Mars has several volcanic rocks composed of large grains of olivine. Notably, this muddier less-gemlike version of peridot also tints Hawaii’s beaches dark green.

Volcanic, “igneous,” rocks were discovered by the Perseverance Mars rover on the Jezero Crater‘s floor. The discovery could unlock the climate history of Mars. It will help in revealing when exactly the red planet was potentially habitable.

The planet was expected to have sedimentary rocks which could have been washed in by rivers and accumulated on the lake bottom. As per researchers from Purdue University in the United States, many of the rocks are dark green in nature.

Also Read: Sand on Mars maybe created due to asteroid impacts, study finds.

“We started to realise that these layered igneous rocks we were seeing look different from the igneous rocks we have these days on Earth. They’re very like igneous rocks on Earth early in its existence,” said planetary scientist Roger Wien in the study published in the journal Science and Science Advances as reported by IANS.

Perseverance landed on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021. The 45-kilometre-wide Jezero Crater was chosen as its landing spot due to an ancient river delta that falls into the crater. Notably, the rocks and lava on Mars that the rover is examining are nearly 4 billion years old.

“The rocks Perseverance is roving over in Jezero have more or less just been sitting at the surface for billions of years, waiting for us to come look at them. That’s one of the reasons that Mars is an important laboratory for understanding the early solar system,” reported the IANS quoting Briony Horgan, associate professor in Purdue’s College of Science, as saying.

It is to examine where and when life first evolved on Earth as rocks that old exist on our planet have been weathered due to active tectonic plates and weathering effects of wind, water and life. Scientists can use conditions on early Mars to help extrapolate the environment and conditions on Earth when life was just beginning.

[ad_2]

Source link

LEAVE A REPLY Cancel reply