NASA's Perseverance rover is making excellent discoveries on Mars, even though it hasn't been on the planet for a full year.
Scientists at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting have revealed that the Jezero Crater was formed from molten volcanic magma and that organic molecule have been found in rocks and dust on the crater floor.
There is no evidence for life on Mars. Any number of non-biological processes can form organic compounds. There have been organic compounds found on Mars before, both by the Mars Express and the Curiosity rover.
The finding suggests that Mars rocks can preserve compounds well, which in turn suggests that biological organic material could also be preserved. That's pretty exciting.
"Curiosity also discovered organics at its landing site within the crater," says Luther Beegle of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The detection was made using a new instrument on Perseverance called the SHERLOC, which means "Sensitive Habitable Environments."
Beegle says that SHERLOC's ability to map the spatial distribution of organics inside rocks adds to the story. This helps us understand the environment in which the organics were formed. The method of production for the identified organics needs to be determined.
The Jezero Crater is wherePerseverance landed in February. The place is rich in clay minerals and is thought to have once been flooded with water. The rover is looking for signs of ancient life in a first for a Mars expedition, and it's likely to happen near water.
In a first, the rover has 43 canisters that it will use to deposit geological samples from Mars, to be retrieved and returned to Earth in a future mission called Mars Sample Return. Perseverance has a suite of scientific instruments that can be used to perform in situ analyses.
The SHERLOC instrument was able to detect organic minerals in the Jezero Crater. These were not only in rocks that the rover abraded for the purpose of studying their internal contents, but in the dust that covered the crater floor.
Scientists on Earth were able to learn the provenance of the bedrock in the Jezero Crater thanks to the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry. After taking a core sample in a region known as "Brac", the data clearly showed the presence of olivine crystals.
The floor of the Jezero crater is thought to have formed from hot magma.
A good geology student will tell you that a thick lava flow, lava lake, or magma chamber can be seen if you look at the texture of the rock.
Future scientists will be able to date events in Jezero, better understand the period in which water was more common on its surface, and reveal the early history of the planet, thanks to the rock that was altered by water several times. Mars Sample Return is going to have a lot to choose from.
We might have a while to wait for that; no launch date has currently been set for Mars Sample Return, and it's at least a year-long round trip to Mars, assuming everything goes smoothly.
Mars scientists can use the data Perseverance is sending home to plan future missions. Scientists want to get their hands on actual Mars rock to complement studies of Martian meteorites that may have been altered on their journey to Earth.
"When these samples are returned to Earth, they will be a source of scientific inquiry and discovery for many years," says Beegle.
