The Perseverance rover has identified evidence of what was once one of the deepest and fast-flowing rivers yet discovered on the planet.
The Perseverance rover has been exploring Mars’s Jezero Crater as part of its mission to search for evidence of ancient life on Mars. The history of water is key in the search for life, and it is currently thought that Mars lost its water around 4 million years ago. Now, the rover has identified evidence of what was once one of the deepest and fast-flowing rivers yet discovered on the planet.
The way the sedimentary rocks are structured suggests that the river passing through this area was fast and powerful. “Those indicate a high-energy river that’s truckin’ and carrying a lot of debris. The more powerful the flow of water, the more easily it’s able to move larger pieces of material,” said Libby Ives of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in a statement. “It’s been a delight to look at rocks on another planet and see processes that are so familiar.
“The wind has acted like a scalpel that has cut the tops off these deposits,” said Perseverance science team members Michael Lamb of Caltech. “We do see deposits like this on Earth, but they’re never as well exposed as they are here on Mars. Earth is covered in vegetation that hides these layers.”
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