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WASHINGTON: NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has now collected two rock samples with signs that they have been in contact with water for a long time, strengthening the case for ancient life on the Red Planet .
“Our first rocks appear to reveal a potentially habitable supported environment,” Ken Farley, project scientist for the mission, said in a statement Friday.
“It’s a big deal that the water has been around for a long time.” The six-wheeled robot took its first sample, baptized “Montdenier” on September 6, and its second, “Montagnac” on the same rock on September 8.
The two samples, slightly larger than a pencil in diameter and about six centimeters long, are now stored in sealed tubes inside the rover.
A first attempt to collect a sample in early August failed after the rock was found to be too friable to withstand drilling by Perseverance.
NASA hopes to bring samples back to Earth for further laboratory analysis
The rover operated in an area known as Jezero Crater, just north of the equator and home to a lake 3.5 billion years ago, when conditions on Mars were much warmer and wetter than today.
The rock which provided the first samples turned out to be of basaltic composition and probably the product of lava flows.
Volcanic rocks contain crystalline minerals useful for radiometric dating.
This in turn could help scientists get a feel for the geological history of the area, such as when the crater formed, when the lake appeared and disappeared, and how the climate changed over time. time.
“An interesting thing about these rocks is also that they are showing signs of sustained interaction with groundwater,” NASA geologist Katie Stack Morgan said at a press conference.
Scientists already knew the crater was home to a lake, but could not rule out the possibility that it was “lightning in the pan” with floodwater filling the crater for as little as 50 years. Now they are more certain that the groundwater has been present for much longer.
“If these rocks have known water for long periods of time, there may be habitable niches in these rocks that could have supported ancient microbial life,” Stack Morgan added.
The salt minerals in the rock cores may have trapped tiny bubbles of ancient Martian water.
“Salts are great minerals for preserving signs of ancient life here on Earth, and we would expect the same to be true for rocks on Mars,” Stack Morgan added.
NASA hopes to return the samples to Earth for further laboratory analysis as part of a joint mission with the European Space Agency in the 2030s.
Posted in Dawn, le 12 September 2021
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