On Mars, persistence describes a complex environment

For almost two years, NASA’s Perseverance Rover Criss-crosses the Martian crater Jezero, the site of an ancient lake. If one of the final goals of the mission is to take rock samples to bring back to Earth, the rover communicates with our planet daily and sends the results of the analyzes carried out by its instruments. A new series of articles have just been published in journals science etc Scientific progressIt provides some keys to understanding the geological history of the crater.

Keep in mind that this landing spot is not randomly selected. Located in the Red Planet’s northern hemisphere, the 35-kilometer-diameter Jezero Crater was filled with water 3.6 billion years ago, making it a particularly interesting place to search for ancient life.

We expected the sedimentary rocks characteristic of ancient lakes, but in fact they are igneous rocks

Olivier Baisac, CNRS Research Director at Sorbonne University and co-author of this work

The published studies relate to the floor beneath the crater where the robot landed in February 2021, and they compile results from three instruments…