With plans for the upcoming Mars Sample Return mission forming, NASA is on the point of deliver a chunk of Mars again to Earth. However first, the Perseverance rover wants to gather and retailer samples from throughout the Jezero crater, prepared for them to be collected and transported to Earth. The rover just lately arrived at a brand new space of the crater named the Yori Go, which is an thrilling alternative to seek for proof of historical life.
The Yori Go is situated in an historical river delta, the place water once flowed and which might have been hospitable to microorganisms thousands and thousands of years in the past. This explicit space is filled with sandstone, a sort of sedimentary rock shaped from particles carried by water that are deposited and compacted collectively into stone.
This makes the world an important place to search for proof of historical life, in keeping with specialists. “We regularly prioritize research of fine-grained sedimentary rocks like this one in our seek for organics and potential biosignatures,” mentioned Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance deputy challenge scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement.
The rocks on this space are additionally just like these from an space that the rover previously explored this summer. “What’s particularly attention-grabbing in regards to the Yori Go outcrop is that it’s laterally equal with ‘Hogwallow Flats,’ the place we discovered very fine-grained sedimentary rocks,” Stack Morgan mentioned. “That implies that the rock mattress is situated on the similar elevation as Hogwallow, and has a big, traceable footprint seen on the floor.”
Nice-grained sedimentary rocks are significantly vital within the seek for life as a result of they usually comprise clay minerals, which kind in water and that are good at preserving natural molecules. If there ever was any life on Mars, then our greatest likelihood of seeing proof of it will likely be to take a look at clay minerals — each as a result of life is more likely to have advanced close to water, and since these minerals are higher at persevering proof of that life than different kinds of rock could be.
Though the Perseverance rover has a classy suite of devices on board, to carry out a full evaluation of such samples we have to get them again to a lab on Earth — therefore the purpose of the Mars Pattern Return mission.
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