A new subject field picture exciting results about the Jezero Crater on Mars , where the Perseverance rover is presently explore — but despite what some newspaper headline suggest , Perseverance has n’t yet found evidence of life on the crimson major planet .
The Jezero Crater is themost exciting place on Marsand was by design choose for the Perseverance bird of passage to research because it ’s the best supposition scientists have at a location thatcouldpotentially have host microbic living gazillion of years ago . What makes the crater so particular is the heavy delta that exist there , which is thought to have been an ancient wetland . An ancient lake is believed to have survive in the crater long ago — which would make it a hospitable place for life to have emerged . The new research confirms that this area did indeed host a lake , but it does n’t say anything about whether there was life there .
The challenge of understanding the chronicle of this region is that scientist have been work primarily from orbital data , which can only order them so much . “ From compass we can see a clump of different deposits , but we ca n’t order for sure if what we ’re get word is their original state , or if we ’re seeing the determination of a long geologic story , ” said lead researcher David Paige of the University of California , Los Angeles , in astatement . “ To tell how these thing formed , we need to see below the surface . ”
Paige and his team have used an instrument on Perseverance cry the Radar Imager for Mars ’ Subsurface Experiment or RIMFAX to peer beneath the satellite ’s airfoil . By using this microwave radar , they can see reflexion beneath the reason down to deepness of about 20 meters . They can search at these reflexion to work out what layers exist there , finding out how thick a bed is and what it is compose of . “ Some geologist say that the ability of radar to see under the surface is kind of like cheating , ” say Paige .
This data shows layers in the rock of the delta , with two layer of deposit between layers of erosion . That suggest there was a prison term when the area was bare rock , and then a lake appear , which deposited deposit . At some point , the story of the lake dipped low enough that more erosion go on before refilling again . Taken together , the evidence is strong that there definitely was a lake here , which increase the chances that life sentence could potentially have developed in the region .
“ The changes we see preserved in the rock ‘n’ roll record are driven by turgid - scale change in the Martian environment , ” Paige said . “ It ’s cool that we can see so much evidence of change in such a minuscule geographical area , which allows us to strain our findings to the scale of the entire crater . ”
The enquiry is issue in the journalScience Advances .
