Mexico.- NASA scientists have managed to collect a sample of soil from Mars that they longed to find.
NASA reported the findings of the Perseverance rover through its official site on March 11, since a new sample of Mars soilwhich was extracted from a region of the inner rim of the Jezero crater, which is believed that was submerged in water for long periods of time and that possibly was part of a beach.
Analysis by instruments aboard NASA's Perseverance Mars rover indicates that the last rock core taken Because the rover was flooded in water for an extended period of time in the distant past, perhaps as part of an ancient Martian beach.
The sample is number 24 of the rover: A count that includes 21 sample tubes filled with rock cores, two filled with regolith (broken rock and dust), and one with a Martian atmosphere.
“Simply put, this is the type of rock we expected to find when we decided to investigate Jezero Crater,” said Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist at Caltech in Pasadena, California.
“Almost all of the minerals in the rock we just sampled were formed in water; On Earth, minerals deposited in water are often good at trapping and preserving ancient organic material and biosignatures. The rock can even tell us about the climatic conditions of Mars that were present when it was formed.”
The presence of these specific minerals is considered promising to preserve a rich record of an ancient habitable environment on Mars.
These mineral collections are important to guide scientists towards the most valuable samples for their eventual return to Earth with the Mars Sample Return campaign.
The display was nicknamed “Bunsen Peak.”in honor of a peak in Yellowstone National Park, which measures approximately 1.7 meters wide and one meter long.
Bunsen's Peak is a good selection, since it is not flat, has less dust and It is easier for scientific instruments to investigate.
Bunsen's Peak appears to be composed of about 75% carbon grains cemented together by almost pure silica (sand).
“The silica and parts of the carbonate appear microcrystallinewhich makes them extremely good at catching and preserve signs of microbial life that may have once lived in this environment“said Sandra Siljeström, a Perseverance scientist at the Swedish Research Institutes in Stockholm.
“That makes this sample excellent for biosignature studies. if returned to Earth. Additionally, the sample could be one of the oldest cores collected so far by Perseverance, and That's important because Mars was at its most habitable at the beginning of its history.“. A potential biosignature is a substance or structure that could be evidence of past life, but that may also have occurred without the presence of life.
The importance of the find will help collect data to support the hypothesis that the rocks that formed in the Jezero crater, They formed along the shores of an ancient lake. said Briony Horgan, a Perseverance scientist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.
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