Mars’ rusty red surface may have given it its famous “Red Planet” status, but it would also appear that thousands of white rocks are strangely littered on the Martian ground. NASA’s Perseverance rover, a robotic geologist that has been exploring the Jezero Crater since early 2021, puzzled scientists when it delivered images of over 4,000 light-toned, pebble-sized rocks scattered all over the crater floor.”These are very unusual rocks and we’re trying to figure out what’s been going on,” Candice Bedford, a planetary scientist at Purdue University in Indiana and a member of the Mars 2020 science team, said at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LSPC) last month.The announcement comes as NASA wraps up an architectural review of returning Martian rocks to Earth as part of the agency’s ambitious Mars Sample Return (MSR) program.Related: NASA’s Perseverance rover captures 360-degree view of Mars’ Jezero Crater (video)The imaged white rocks are what scientists refer to as “floats,” meaning they have been removed and transported from their original habitats; some are smooth with pits while others appear to be an amalgamation of multiple layers. Initial analyses, conducted with Perseverance’s onboard instruments, revealed the rocks are dehydrated — not only in water content, but also in other minerals including iron, magnesium, calcium and sodium. “These are pretty depleted in a lot of things,” Bedford said.The team is particularly interested in the origins of these unusual rocks as their sources can reveal clues about the Red Planet’s past, including precisely when water would’ve flooded the Jezero crater, which we see as an arid stretch of land today. Despite spotting more than 4,000 such rocks, Perseverance hasn’t managed to see even a hint of what’s known as an “outcrop” related to the rocks, which is essentially a bedrock of similar properties that’d jut out of the Martian surface.The rocks’ dehydrated nature suggests they were heated and metamorphosed by either lava flows or …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnMars’ rusty red surface may have given it its famous “Red Planet” status, but it would also appear that thousands of white rocks are strangely littered on the Martian ground. NASA’s Perseverance rover, a robotic geologist that has been exploring the Jezero Crater since early 2021, puzzled scientists when it delivered images of over 4,000 light-toned, pebble-sized rocks scattered all over the crater floor.”These are very unusual rocks and we’re trying to figure out what’s been going on,” Candice Bedford, a planetary scientist at Purdue University in Indiana and a member of the Mars 2020 science team, said at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LSPC) last month.The announcement comes as NASA wraps up an architectural review of returning Martian rocks to Earth as part of the agency’s ambitious Mars Sample Return (MSR) program.Related: NASA’s Perseverance rover captures 360-degree view of Mars’ Jezero Crater (video)The imaged white rocks are what scientists refer to as “floats,” meaning they have been removed and transported from their original habitats; some are smooth with pits while others appear to be an amalgamation of multiple layers. Initial analyses, conducted with Perseverance’s onboard instruments, revealed the rocks are dehydrated — not only in water content, but also in other minerals including iron, magnesium, calcium and sodium. “These are pretty depleted in a lot of things,” Bedford said.The team is particularly interested in the origins of these unusual rocks as their sources can reveal clues about the Red Planet’s past, including precisely when water would’ve flooded the Jezero crater, which we see as an arid stretch of land today. Despite spotting more than 4,000 such rocks, Perseverance hasn’t managed to see even a hint of what’s known as an “outcrop” related to the rocks, which is essentially a bedrock of similar properties that’d jut out of the Martian surface.The rocks’ dehydrated nature suggests they were heated and metamorphosed by either lava flows or …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
