They've never seen anything like it – all over Mars.
rock the Casbah
NASA's Mars Perseverance rover has found something never seen before on the Red Planet: a zebra-striped rock that sticks out like a sore thumb amid the planet's dusty, notoriously red landscape.
The rover found the unusual rock, about 7.8 inches wide, last week while the spacecraft was exploring the Jezero Crater, north of the planet's equator, which is believed to be the site of an ancient lake and river delta, NASA said in a statement about the discovery.
“The science team thinks this rock has a texture that is different from any other rock seen in Jezero Crater and perhaps across Mars,” the space agency said in a statement. “Our knowledge of its chemical composition is limited, but initial interpretations suggest that igneous and/or metamorphic processes may have created its streaks.”
According to NASA, researchers are now calling this rock “Freya's Castle” – a nod to a rugged peak in the Grand Canyon – and are speculating that it came from much higher elevations. Originally, this loose rock rolled there and did not grow moss.
Stone Alone
Freya Castle isn't the only strange rock Perseverance has found in the crater this year. Earlier this year, the probe found an arrow-shaped slab with tiny “leopard spots” that may be intriguing evidence of microbial life billions of years ago, when scientists believed there may have been water on the surface of Mars.
Perseverance took a core sample of that rock, now called “Cheyawa Falls,” for further analysis. The rover has also found two other rocks, called “Atoko Point” and “Atoko Point.” ,Bunsen Peak,, Both could provide more clues about the early history of Mars.
All of these discoveries are incredible for Perseverance, which landed on Mars in 2021 and whose current mission is to find evidence of any alien microorganisms that may have thrived on Mars when it was wetter and warmer.
NASA hopes to send samples collected by the rover back to Earth for further analysis as part of its beleaguered Mars sample return mission, in the hope that the data will tell us more about the climate of Mars billions of years ago, and what happened to leave the planet so cold and desolate.
Until then, Perseverance is leaving no stone unturned.
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