NASA's Perseverance rover has spotted an oddball rock in an ancient river channel on Mars. Deputy project scientist Katie Stack Morgan explains.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00The Mars Perseverance rover is about to start climbing out of the crater it landed on.
00:05And it's exploring rocks that are amongst the oldest we've seen on Mars.
00:08Or the youngest!
00:10Join us as we investigate to find out.
00:15We're here in the Mars yard at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
00:19This is where we test robotic prototypes as we explore Mars.
00:22Right now, the real Perseverance rover is in the main channel that once fed Jezero crater.
00:27Picture rushing water carrying big boulders and sediment as it filled the crater.
00:32But getting there was a slog.
00:34It was slow going through an area called the Margin Unit, which is really rocky and hilly.
00:39But once we got out of the rocks, we passed through a dune field and it has been smooth sailing ever since.
00:44Now that we're in the channel, we're seeing things we've never seen before, like this interesting boulder pile.
00:50Can you tell which rock is not like the others?
00:53We want to know what is this rock and where did it come from?
00:57Many of the boulders we see at the Martian surface represent ancient lava flows that have broken up and eroded over time.
01:03But a rock like this one might have come from deeper in the crust and could be amongst the oldest rocks we've seen or studied on Mars.
01:11It could also have come from the ancient rocks exposed nearby in the crater rim, which we're about to explore.
01:17Before we get to the rim, though, we're making a stop at a site called Bright Angel.
01:22The rocks there could contain sediments deposited by one of the last bursts of water into the crater and could be amongst the youngest rocks we've looked at yet.
01:31Perseverance is equipped with cameras, geochemistry instruments and an underground radar.
01:36We're going to use observations from these instruments to determine how and when these rocks formed.
01:41And depending on what we find, we may decide to sample these rocks.
01:45Whether Bright Angel is older or younger than what we've seen before in the crater,
01:49these rocks could be an important bookend to our Jezero sample collection.
01:53With Jezero in the rearview mirror, I'm most looking forward to this next phase of exploration on the crater rim.
01:59We'll be taking thedessus of that one time..
02:01The
02:06Moi
02:07The
02:24Moi
02:26The