The Perseverance rover from NASA has just discovered crucial new evidence of a world that once harbored extraterrestrial life.
According to Universal Today, the new discovery by the Perseverance life-hunting robot occurred in the Bright Angel region, within a vast impact plain known as Jezero Crater on Mars.
The unusual rocks—referred to by scientists as “popcorn rocks”—provide evidence of something NASA has long hoped to find: the presence—or once presence—of water.
Image of the area being explored by NASA’s life-hunting rover, showing a light-colored rock with a popcorn-like rough surface, which is quite common – (Photo: NASA)
The mission of Perseverance focuses on ancient life on Mars.
In addition to searching for fossil evidence of ancient life, or perhaps even something still living, it aims to explore and understand environments that could support life.
The new evidence supports the hypothesis NASA believed when deploying this costly robot to Mars: Jezero Crater may have been a wet plain billions of years ago, with a river and lake system similar to Earth, teeming with life.
The Bright Angel area that NASA’s rover is currently exploring is a scientifically interesting region. It is a part of the river branch leading into Jezero Crater.
Aerial image taken by NASA’s orbiter, marking the river branch and the path that Perseverance has traveled – (Photo: NASA).
The strange rocks in this area are brightly colored, with a rough surface resembling popcorn and featuring many ridges that look like mineral veins.
Mineral veins appear when water transports minerals through rocks and deposits them, which is quite common in Earth rocks. Thus, scientists believe that the “popcorn rocks” are evidence of a world similar to Earth’s river and lake regions.
The next step is to identify the minerals present in these popcorn rocks.
Perseverance will use abrasive tools and other instruments to take a closer look. It will vaporize some of the rocks and use the SuperCam tool to examine their chemical properties.
If the results are promising, it may collect samples into tubes—one tube to be brought back and another to be left on-site for NASA’s spacecraft to access and return to Earth.
