{"id":9107,"date":"2024-01-26T14:31:17","date_gmt":"2024-01-26T19:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/?p=9107"},"modified":"2024-01-26T14:31:17","modified_gmt":"2024-01-26T19:31:17","slug":"confirmation-of-ancient-lake-on-mars-builds-excitement-for-perseverance-rovers-samples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/?p=9107","title":{"rendered":"Confirmation of Ancient Lake on Mars Builds Excitement for Perseverance Rover&#8217;s Samples"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 640px;\" class=\"wp-video\"><video class=\"wp-video-shortcode\" id=\"video-9107-1\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" preload=\"metadata\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"video\/mp4\" src=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/cms.ipressroom.com\/173\/files\/20240\/65aad34c2cfac25d043136d1_Perseverance+Rover\/Perseverance+Rover.mp4?_=1\" \/><\/video><\/div>\n<p>If life ever existed on Mars, the Perseverance rover\u2019s verification of lake sediments at the base of the Jezero crater reinforces the hope that traces might be found in the crater. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In new research published in the journal&nbsp;<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/sciadv.adi8339?adobe_mc=MCMID%3D22453653906030761804143834832785357139%7CMCORGID%3D242B6472541199F70A4C98A6%2540AdobeOrg%7CTS%3D1706297342\">Science Advances<\/a><\/em>, a team led by UCLA and The University of Oslo shows that at some point, the crater filled with water, depositing layers of sediments on the crater floor. The lake subsequently shrank&nbsp;and sediments carried by the river that fed it formed an enormous delta. As the lake dissipated over time, the sediments in the crater were eroded, forming the geologic features visible on the surface today.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The periods of deposition and erosion took place over eons of environmental changes, the radar indicates, confirming that inferences about the Jezero crater\u2019s geologic history based on Mars images obtained from space are accurate.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 700px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/earimediaprodweb.azurewebsites.net\/Api\/v1\/Multimedia\/50914ed4-d381-4414-bd6c-686e91598858\/Rendition\/low-res\/Content\/Public\" width=\"700\" height=\"330\"><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mars Perseverance Rover RIMFAX ground penetrating radar measurements of the Hawksbill Gap region of the Jezero Crater Western Delta, Mars. Hawksbill Gap.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cFrom orbit we can see a bunch of different deposits, but we can\u2019t tell for sure if what we\u2019re seeing is their original state, or if we\u2019re seeing the conclusion of a long geological story,\u201d said David Paige, a UCLA professor of Earth, planetary and space sciences and first author of the paper. \u201cTo tell how these things formed, we need to see below the surface.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The rover, which is about the size of a car and carries seven scientific instruments, has been exploring the 30-mile-wide crater, studying its geology and atmosphere and collecting samples since 2021. Perseverance\u2019s soil and rock samples will be brought back to Earth by a future expedition and studied for evidence of past life.<\/p>\n<p>Between May and December 2022, Perseverance drove from the crater floor onto the delta, a vast expanse of 3 billion-year-old sediments that, from orbit, resembles the river deltas on Earth.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 640px;\" class=\"wp-video\"><video class=\"wp-video-shortcode\" id=\"video-9107-2\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" preload=\"metadata\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"video\/mp4\" src=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/cms.ipressroom.com\/173\/files\/20240\/65ab07582cfac25cff3c782e_Mars+Perseverance+Jezero+crater+on+board+video\/Mars+Perseverance+Jezero+crater+on+board+video.mp4?_=2\" \/><\/video><\/div>\n<p>As the rover drove onto the delta, Perseverance\u2019s&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/mars.nasa.gov\/mars2020\/spacecraft\/instruments\/rimfax\/\">Radar Imager for Mars\u2019 Subsurface Experiment<\/a>, or RIMFAX, instrument fired radar waves downward at 10-centimeter intervals and measured pulses reflected from depths of about 20 meters below the surface. With the radar, scientists can see down to the base of the sediments to reveal the top surface of the buried crater floor.<\/p>\n<p>Years of research with ground-penetrating radar and testing of RIMFAX on Earth have taught scientists how to read the structure and composition of subsurface layers from their radar reflections. The resulting subsurface image shows rock layers that can be interpreted like a highway road cut.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSome geologists say that the ability of radar to see under the surface is kind of like cheating,\u201d said Paige, who is RIMFAX\u2019s deputy principal investigator.<\/p>\n<p>RIMFAX imaging revealed two distinct periods of sediment deposition sandwiched between two periods of erosion. UCLA and the University of Oslo report that the crater floor below the delta is not uniformly flat, suggesting that a period of erosion occurred prior to the deposition of lake sediments. The radar images show that the sediments are regular and horizontal &#8211; just like sediments deposited in lakes on Earth. The existence of lake sediments had been suspected in&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/newsroom.ucla.edu\/releases\/mars-underground-images-from-perseverance-rover\">previous studies<\/a>, but has been confirmed by this research.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A second period of deposition occurred when fluctuations in the lake level allowed the river to deposit a broad delta that once extended far out into the lake, but has now eroded back closer to the river\u2019s mouth.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe changes we see preserved in the rock record are driven by large-scale changes in the Martian environment,\u201d Paige said. \u201cIt\u2019s cool that we can see so much evidence of change in such a small geographic area, which allows us extend our findings to the scale of the entire crater.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If life ever existed on Mars, the Perseverance rover\u2019s verification of lake sediments at the base of the Jezero crater reinforces the hope that traces might be found in the crater. &nbsp; In new research published in the journal&nbsp;Science Advances, a team led by UCLA and The University of Oslo shows that at some point,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":9108,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/earimediaprodweb.azurewebsites.net\/Api\/v1\/Multimedia\/50914ed4-d381-4414-bd6c-686e91598858\/Rendition\/low-res\/Content\/Public","fifu_image_alt":"Confirmation of Ancient Lake on Mars Builds Excitement for Perseverance Rover&#8217;s Samples","footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9107"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9109,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9107\/revisions\/9109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}