If you look at this Mars vista brings back childhood memories of the song: “One of these things is not like the others”, NASA scientists are there with you.
Perseverance, a six-wheeled laboratory the size of a car, traveled to the Red Planet’s Neretva Vallis last week. Although this region may look like an arid desert, it was once an ancient river channel that flowed into the Jezero Crater billions of years ago.
As Perseverance traversed the inlet, the rover came across a hill covered in boulders, with one in particular catching the science team’s attention: a lightly speckled rock amid a sea of dark chunks.
“Every now and then you see something strange in the Martian landscape, and the team says, ‘Oh, let’s go there,'” Katie Stack Morgan, deputy project scientist for NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, told me. Mashable. “This was like the textbook definition of (pursuing) the bright, shiny thing because it was so bright and white.”
The boulder is so exceptional that scientists have said it is inside a league in itself. Further analysis with the rover’s instruments shows it is likely an anorthosite, a rock never seen before while exploring Mars, Stack Morgan said, although there are signs such rocks should exist. Not even the Curiosity robberwho has observed more variation in Gale Crater has seen one like this.
How scientists revealed a new rock on Mars without the rock
The Perseverance rover found an unusual rock on Mars, believed to be an anorthosite.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
Although such anorthosite rocks are found on the Moon and in mountain ranges on Earth, they are generally considered rare in the Solar System. Real examples from Mars have eluded researchers, not even in the inventory of our planet Meteorites from the Red Planet who traveled through it room to come here.
This discovery could strengthen the idea that Mars’ early crust was much more complex than once thought – and perhaps comparable to Earth’s original crust. Understanding Mars’ ancient crust could also help unlock secrets about Earth’s evolution and how life emerged here.
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“This was like the textbook definition of (pursuing) the bright, shiny thing.”
The rover team named the special rock, about 18 inches wide and 12 inches high, “Atoco Point” after a landmark in the Grand Canyon.
Perseverance has been exploring the Jezero crater, an ancient dried delta on Mars, since 2021.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
“Seeing a rock like Atoco Point is one of these clues that we do indeed have anorthosites on Mars, and this could be a sample of that material from the lower crust,” Stack Morgan said. “If we see it later in the context of other rocks, it could give us an idea of how Mars’ earliest crust formed.”
Anorthosites are made primarily of feldspar, a mineral associated with lava flows. Feldspar is richer in silica than basalt and is one of the last substances to crystallize from magma. On the other hand, basalts, dark volcanic rocks rich in iron and magnesium, are ubiquitous on the surface of Mars.
Many Perseverance scientists believe that magma beneath the surface created the minerals in Atoko Point, and that a giant impact on Mars may have excavated the rock to the surface, later causing a chunk of the crater rim to fall to its current location. Others think the boulder was made somewhere far away and that a flowing ancient river brought it there.
The NASA team hopes to discover many more rocks like Atoco Point in a few months when Perseverance reaches the crater rim.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Whether scientists will ever get their hands on this rock or one like it remains to be seen. Perseverance has been there collecting samples from the Jezero Crater since 2021. The region, an ancient dried delta, is one where scientists believe microscopic organisms may have existed long ago. But the plan to fly rocks and dust grains to Earth, a complex mission called Mars Sample Return, is in jeopardy. Rising costs have led to layoffs and cancellation warnings from Congress. The agency is making now a desperate plea for ideas to save the mission.
Perhaps surprisingly, the rover team chose to drive away from Atoco Point without even taking a sample, despite its significance. That’s because the team hopes to discover many more in a few months, when the rover reaches the crater rim. Finding examples from the original site could provide scientists with much more context.
“We said, ‘Okay, let’s keep this rock in mind,’” Stack Morgan said. “We might come back here again if we don’t find this elsewhere on the crater rim.”