First Underground Radar Images From Mars Perseverance Rover Reveal Some Surprises
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
After a tantalizing year-and-a-half wait since the Mars Perseverance Rover touched down on our nearest planetary neighbor, new data is arriving—and bringing with it a few surprises.
[...] Perseverance is currently exploring a delta on the western edge of the crater, where a river once fed the lake, leaving behind a large deposit of dirt and rocks it picked up along its course. As the rover gathers more data, the researchers hope to clear up the complex history of this part of the Red Planet.
"We were quite surprised to find rocks stacked up at an inclined angle," said David Paige, a UCLA professor of Earth, planetary and space sciences and one of the lead researchers on the Radar Imager for Mars Subsurface Experiment, or RIMFAX. "We were expecting to see horizontal rocks on the crater floor. The fact that they are tilted like this requires a more complex geologic history. They could have been formed when molten rock rose up towards the surface, or, alternatively, they could represent an older delta deposit buried in the crater floor."
[...] "RIMFAX is giving us the backstory of the samples we're going to analyze. It's exciting that the rover's instruments are producing data and we're starting to learn, but there's a lot more to come," Paige said. "We landed on the crater floor, but now we're driving up on the actual delta, which is the main target of the mission. This is just the beginning of what we'll hopefully soon know about Mars."
Martian Surprise: NASA's Perseverance Makes New Discoveries In Mars' Jezero Crater
Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
NASA scientists got a big surprise when the Perseverance Mars rover began analyzing rocks on the floor of Jezero Crater in the spring of 2021: They had expected to find sedimentary rock because the crater held a lake billions of years ago. This would have formed when sand and mud settled in a once-watery environment. Instead, they discovered the floor was made of two types of igneous rock – one that formed from volcanic activity at the surface and the other originated from magma deep underground.
[...] “One great value of the igneous rocks we collected is that they will tell us about when the lake was present in Jezero. We know it was there more recently than the igneous crater floor rocks formed,” said Ken Farley of Caltech, Perseverance’s project scientist and the lead author of the first of the new Science papers. “This will address some major questions: When was Mars’ climate conducive to lakes and rivers on the planet’s surface, and when did it change to the very cold and dry conditions we see today?”
[...] A longstanding mystery on Mars is solved in a second paper published in Science. Mars orbiters spotted a rock formation filled with the mineral olivine years ago. Measuring roughly 27,000 square miles (70,000 square kilometers) – nearly the size of South Carolina – this formation extends from the inside edge of Jezero Crater into the surrounding region.
Scientists have offered various theories on why olivine is so plentiful over such a large area of the surface. These include meteorite impacts, volcanic eruptions, and sedimentary processes. Another theory is that the olivine formed deep underground from slowly cooling magma – molten rock – before being exposed over time by erosion.
Yang Liu of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California and her co-authors have determined that the last explanation is the most likely. Perseverance abraded a rock to reveal its composition. Scientists studying the exposed patch homed in on the olivine’s large grain size, along with the rock’s chemistry and texture.
[...] The science team is thrilled by what they’ve found so far, but they’re even more excited about the science that lies ahead.
References: “Compositionally and density stratified igneous terrain in Jezero crater, Mars” by Roger C. Wiens, Arya Udry, Olivier Beyssac, et al., 25 August 2022, Science Advances. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abo3399 : “An olivine cumulate outcrop on the floor of Jezero crater, Mars” by Y. Liu, M. M. Tice, M. E. Schmidt, et al., 25 August 2022, Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.abo2756 : “Aqueously altered igneous rocks sampled on the floor of Jezero crater, Mars” by K. A. Farley, K. M. Stack, D. L. Shuster, et al., 25 August 2022, Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.abo2196 : “Ground penetrating radar observations of subsurface structures in the floor of Jezero crater, Mars” by Svein-Erik Hamran, David A. Paige, Abigail Allwood, et al., 25 August 2022, Science Advances. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abp8564
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Monday August 29 2022, @12:32AM
I love all things science when it comes to the heavens. We have a remote control car on another planet doing good science for us while charging its own batteries. US citizens are like 'Meh'.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Username on Monday August 29 2022, @12:32AM (2 children)
We have a rover on Venus?
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Monday August 29 2022, @01:30AM (1 child)
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/pt.6.3.20190312a/full/ [scitation.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2022, @03:51AM
That is awesome for two main reasons: First, it sounds absurd, but once the actual problem starts to be explained it becomes obvious why that is the case. And Second, for pointing out the "whirly-dirly corollary."
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday August 29 2022, @02:05AM
Reports were received of a black-headed creature with 2 prominent eyes, wearing a helmet, and complaining about the lack of an Earth-shattering kaboom. Isn't that lovely?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.