NASA's Perseverance rover investigates geologically rich Mars terrain NASAJPL
"We picked the Jezero Crater for Perseverance to explore because we thought it had the best chance of providing scientifically excellent samples—and now we know we sent theto the right location," said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for science in Washington."These first two science campaigns have yielded an amazing diversity of samples to bring back to Earth by the Mars Sample Return campaign.
"The delta, with its diverse sedimentary rocks, contrasts beautifully with the igneous rocks—formed from crystallization of magma—discovered on the crater floor," said Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley of Caltech in Pasadena, California."This juxtaposition provides us with a rich understanding of the geologic history after the crater formed and a diverse sample suite.
In 2013, NASA's Curiosity Mars rover found evidence of organic matter in rock-powder samples, and Perseverance has detected organics in Jezero Crater before. But unlike that previous discovery, this latest detection was made in an area where, in the distant past, sediment and salts were deposited into a lake under conditions in which life could potentially have existed.
The first step in the NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return campaign began when Perseverance cored its first rock sample in September 2021. Along with its-core samples, the rover has collected one atmospheric sample and two witness tubes, all of which are stored in the rover's belly.
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