NASA's Perseverance rover has spotted an oddball rock in an ancient river channel on Mars. Deputy project scientist Katie Stack Morgan explains.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
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TechTranscript
00:00The Mars Perseverance rover is about to start climbing out of the crater it landed on,
00:05and it's exploring rocks that are amongst the oldest we've seen on Mars, or the youngest.
00:10Join us as we investigate to find out.
00:15We're here in the Mars yard at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
00:19This is where we test robotic prototypes as we explore Mars.
00:22Right now, the real Perseverance rover is in the main channel that once fed Jezero crater.
00:28That's for sure, rushing water, carrying big boulders and sediment as it filled the crater.
00:33But getting there was a slog.
00:35It was slow going through an area called the margin unit, which is really rocky and hilly.
00:40But once we got out of the rocks, we passed through a dune field, and it has been smooth sailing ever since.
00:45Now that we're in the channel, we're seeing things we've never seen before, like this interesting boulder pile.
00:51Can you tell which rock is not like the others?
00:54We want to know, what is this rock, and where did it come from?
00:57Many of the boulders we see at the Martian surface represent ancient lava flows that have broken up and eroded over time.
01:04But a rock like this one might have come from deeper in the crust,
01:08and could be amongst the oldest rocks we've seen or studied on Mars.
01:12It could also have come from the ancient rocks exposed nearby in the crater rim, which we're about to explore.
01:18Before we get to the rim, though, we're making a stop at a site called Bright Angel.
01:23The rocks there could contain sediments deposited by one of the last bursts of water into the crater,
01:28and could be amongst the youngest rocks we've looked at yet.
01:32Perseverance is equipped with cameras, geochemistry instruments, and an underground radar.
01:37We're going to use observations from these instruments to determine how and when these rocks formed,
01:42and depending on what we find, we may decide to sample these rocks.
01:45Whether Bright Angel is older or younger than what we've seen before in the crater,
01:49these rocks could be an important bookend to our Jezero sample collection.
01:53With Jezero in the rearview mirror, I'm most looking forward to this next phase of exploration on the crater rim.