NASA releases image of ancient river on Mars

NASA has revealed an image of an ancient dried up river on Mars, as scientists search for evidence the Red Planet once had life.

British newspaper “Daily Mail” reported that new images released by “NASA” show an ancient river located on the surface of Mars, adding that geologists have found vital organic compounds in specific areas of Jezero Crater, which includes the delta river.

The researchers published in the journal “Science” images taken by the mobile robot “Perseverance” and indicate the routes by which water flowed on the planet billions of years ago.

Perseverance, which landed on Mars last February, revealed its first scientific findings, boosting scientists’ interest in finding traces of past life at its landing site, a crater that contained a lake three billion ago years. The Franco-American “Supercam” camera installed on the mast of the robot of the American space agency “NASA” was able to monitor the environment of the Jezero crater, a location chosen on the basis of satellite data.

The first high-resolution images captured by the camera confirmed indications from satellite data.The 35-kilometer-diameter crater already contained a closed lake previously fed by a river through its delta, between 3 and 3.6 billion years ago. ‘years.

The study, published in the journal Science, and the first since the landing of Perseverance, gives a series of new details about this site, which included a lake the size of Lake Geneva in Geneva, Switzerland.

“SuperCam”, a very advanced camera whose parts were installed in France, made it possible to monitor sedimentary layers which serve as fertile ground to “find traces of previous life”, according to what the National Institute of Scientific Research (CNRS) explained. during a press conference where he presented the results of this study.The study was supervised by one of its researchers, Nicola Mangold.

These layers, which form a plateau about forty meters high, have been called Kodiak, a metaphor for “fine deposits of clay or sand in which organic matter is easy to preserve”, as this geologist explained. planetary at the Laboratory of Planetary Science and Geodynamics. However, care must be taken in approaching the results, as this organic matter can also come from “hard carbonaceous materials” such as cometary deposits.