The autonomous rover Perseverance has captured new images revealing geological evidence of a fast-flowing river that once fed into the Jezero Crater on Mars.
About a year ago, NASA’s rover began investigating a fan-shaped sediment deposit in an area 250 meters high, believed to be the remnants of an ancient river delta, CNN reported on May 18.
Image sent back to Earth by NASA’s Perseverance rover. (Photo: NASA).
The curved layers of sediment indicate that flowing water seems to have shaped them, and the latest images captured by the rover suggest that this could be a deeper, faster-flowing river than scientists initially expected.
The latest findings from Perseverance, gathered in two mosaic images, reveal wavy layers of sedimentary rocks with remnants of what NASA refers to as “pebbles and coarse sediment grains.”
“This indicates the traces of a high-energy river, transporting and carrying a lot of debris,” shared Libby Ives, a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the operational center for the Perseverance rover.
Ives noted that stronger water flows can more easily move larger material fragments.
Meanwhile, Katie Stack Morgan, deputy lead for the Perseverance science team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, stated that rivers could carry large rocks and debris from other areas on Mars to the Jezero Crater.
This is the first time scientists are exploring such an environment on Mars.
Perseverance began investigating the remnants of the environment inside the Jezero Crater—which now resembles a dry lakebed—after landing on Mars in February 2021.
Scientists have long been curious about the diverse waterways that existed on Mars over 3 billion years ago, when the planet was warmer and wetter.
