Photos from NASA’s Perseverance rover point to past flash floods on Mars

New study from the team behind NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover reveals that areas of Mars – particularly the Jezero Crater, an area that scientists believe may hold the keys to ancient Martian life – have been flooded lightning “significant” that have sculpted the landscape in the rocky desert that we see. today.

The team says they based their findings on images the rover took of sediment that accumulated at the end of an ancient river that fed into a lake inside Jezero Crater.

The photos, taken during a landing on February 18 and released Thursday, suggest that billions of years ago Mars had a thick atmosphere that could withstand large amounts of water. Sediment seen in the footage shows a now barren river delta that experienced “last minute flood events” whose waters carried rocks and debris from the Mars Highlands to the banks of the crater.

“Never before has such a well-preserved stratigraphy been visible on Mars,” said lead author Nicolas Mangold of the Laboratory of Planetology and Geodynamics. “This is the key observation that allows us to confirm once and for all the presence of a lake and a river delta in Jezero. road.”

The NASA team has, according to their press release, “long planned to visit the delta” leading to Jezero Crater because of the potential it may contain fossils of ancient microbial life.

The images collected have given scientists information on where they can find the best rock samples to find traces of life that may once have existed on Mars, which scientists hope they can bring back to Earth for analysis with equipment. more powerful laboratory. Evidence of so much ancient water brings hope to scientists.

“We saw distinct layers in the escarpments containing boulders up to 5 feet in diameter that we knew had no reason to be there,” Mangold said.

Mangold and his team believe the flash floods that washed away these rocks – some for tens of kilometers – would have moved at 4 to 20 mph.

Sanjeev Gupta, of Imperial College London and co-author of the article, said the findings “could potentially provide valuable information on why the entire planet has dried up” and what happened to old microbial life.

NASA then plans to send spacecraft to Mars to collect the rock samples and send them back to Earth.