Since touching down on the Martian surface in 2012, NASA's Curiosity rover has been beaming back captivating imagery of the enigmatic Red Planet. A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life.Devdiscourse News Desk | California | Updated: 12-05-2023 11:59 IST | Created: 12-05-2023 11:59 IST Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS The six-wheeled Perseverance landed on the floor of the 45 kms wide Jezero Crater in February 2021. "But at the same time, the most common way to create these kinds of landforms would be a river." "These layers are anomalously tall for rivers on Earth," Ives said. Scientists think these tall layers may also have been formed by a powerful river, although they're exploring other explanations, as well. "Pinestand" is an isolated hill bearing sedimentary layers that curve skyward, some as high as 20 metres. Earth is covered in vegetation that hides these layers."Ī second mosaic captured by Perseverance shows a separate location that is part of the curvilinear unit and about 450 metres from 'Skrinkle Haven'. "We do see deposits like this on Earth, but they're never as well exposed as they are here on Mars. "The wind has acted like a scalpel that has cut the tops off these deposits," said Michael Lamb of Caltech, a river specialist and Perseverance science team collaborator, in the statement. Scientists suspect that after these piles of sediment turned to rock, they were sandblasted by wind over the aeons and carved down to their present size. The layers were likely much taller in the past. They could be the remnants of a river's banks that shifted over time - or the remnants of sandbars that formed in the river. When viewed from the ground, the curved layers appear arranged in rows that ripple out across the landscape. Scientists have previously dubbed a series of curving bands of layered rock within Jezero Crater as "the curvilinear unit."Ī new image from a location within the curvilinear unit, nicknamed 'Skrinkle Haven' proves that the curved layers were formed by powerfully flowing water. ![]() Read | NASA's snake-like robot on a mission to discover life on Saturn's moon The more powerful the flow of water, the more easily it's able to move larger pieces of material," said Libby Ives, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which operates the Perseverance rover, in a statement. "Those indicate a high-energy river that's truckin' and carrying a lot of debris. The images were captured using the Mastcam-Z camera between February 28 and March 9. Stitched together from hundreds of images, two new mosaics suggest a powerful river system, revealing important clues: coarse sediment grains and cobbles. Perseverance is exploring the top of a fan-shaped pile of sedimentary rock that stands 250 metres tall and features curving layers suggestive of flowing water. ![]() New images taken by NASA's Perseverance Mars rover show signs of a rollicking river on the Red Planet, one that was deeper and faster-moving than scientists have ever seen evidence of in the past.
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