""Jezero was selected because it's in a location amongst the most ancient terrains on Mars, exposing some of the oldest rocks anywhere in the solar system," said Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "These really ancient rocks provide us a window into a period of time that's not particularly well represented on our own planet Earth," she added."
"The exciting rock sample in question is dubbed Sapphire Canyon. NASA's Perseverance Mars rover collected it last summer from a reddish, vein-filled rock along the edge of an ancient, quarter-mile wide river valley known as Neretva Vallis. The valley was carved by water flowing into the large Jezero Crater, which also held a lake billions of years ago."
Perseverance collected a rock sample dubbed Sapphire Canyon from a reddish, vein-filled rock along the edge of Neretva Vallis, an ancient, quarter-mile-wide river valley feeding Jezero Crater. Jezero Crater once held a lake billions of years ago and exposes some of the oldest rocks in the solar system, offering a window into a period when life was emerging on Earth. Perseverance landed in early 2021 to collect and analyze samples from an ancient river delta identified as a potential source of microbial signatures. In July 2024 the rover recovered the Sapphire Canyon sample, which contains potential biosignatures.
Read at www.npr.org
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]