The Perseverance rover has found a compelling red rock on Mars that contains green foliage, indicating a rocky formation.
The “mysterious” rock, as NASA described it in a statement, could not be fully investigated because the rover’s instruments did not have enough space to work. .
Endurance arrived on Mars in February 2021 with a primary mission: to investigate a dry lake-side river that is billions of years old for signs of ancient bacterial life. Mars is the only world in our solar system where space agencies have active occupants driving around the planet’s surface, photographing and digging for evidence of its ancient past.
Although Mars has more extreme temperature fluctuations than our planet, and is much drier, scientists believe that it had large pools of liquid water on its surface billions of years ago. One of these lakes is in Jezero Crater, where Perseverance landed three years ago.
Since then, Perseverance has traversed the western edge of Lake Jezero, surveying the planet and picking up rock cores and Martian debris that will eventually be sent back to Earth, pending more funding—and more determination.
The basic idea behind Perseverance’s astronomical search is that, if life existed on Mars, it would look like some of the earliest organisms on Earth: microbes from shallow water. These bacteria form sedimentary concretions—layers of rock—as they continue their lives, which turn into twisted patterns like Sol Lewitt. Those fossils are called stromatolites, and they still form on Earth today. Earlier this year, a team of researchers identified the oldest photosynthetic structures yet, in a 1.75-billion-year-old rock in northern Australia—the same neck of the forest where the oldest stromatolites formed.
In July, Perseverance found “tiger spots” on Mars in the hematite and calcium sulfate groups, which NASA scientists believe could indicate that the rock was once a mudstone containing organic matter.
Now, Perseverance has investigated another compelling object: a red rock with green spots. Not a smoking gun for extraterrestrial life, the stone nevertheless provides a window into Mars’ a puzzle a puzzle metal-rich the past.
The red color of the rock may be due to oxidized iron, but the Perseverance team wanted to take a closer look. The rover cut a 2-inch-wide (5-centimeter-wide) circular section in the rock surface using a prying tool to see the rock underneath, which has not been eroded or otherwise altered by the windy conditions of the Martian surface.
Green spots on the rock are “normal,” according to a NASA release. They occur when water enters iron-bearing sediment before it turns to rock, releasing the iron into the green. On Earth, bacteria can cause that reaction, although it can also be caused by the decomposition of organic matter or interactions between sulfur and iron. Whatever the cause, studying this rock can provide information about Mars’ past watery past, possible life on the planet, or how the planet evolved.
Given the potential, the green layered deposit warrants further investigation. But there wasn’t enough space around the rock sample for Perseverance to open its instruments, so the rock’s composition couldn’t be studied in detail.
I hope there are more rocks with similar characteristics in Perseverance’s near-future. The rover is currently climbing the rim of Jezero Crater, climbing out of its Martian dormitories toward a high altitude view of our dry neighbor.
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