Perseverance Rover Delivered Amazing View Of Ancient Mars River

Space.com

NASA Perseverance rover captured stunning imagery of an area called "Airey Hill" in Jezero Crater on the Red Planet. Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley gives you a tour.   Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS; ESA/DLR/FU-Berlin

Transcript

00:00 [ Music ]

00:04 After a thousand sunrises on Mars,

00:06 here's where NASA's Perseverance rover is exploring now.

00:09 A river environment, billions of years old,

00:11 that tells a dynamic story of the forces that shaped it.

00:15 Let's take a tour of this area

00:16 and see where we'll send the rover next.

00:19 Perseverance is exploring Jezero Quater,

00:22 where an ancient lake and river system once existed.

00:25 If microbes ever lived here,

00:26 signs of them could be preserved in these rocks.

00:30 About three and a half billion years ago,

00:32 a river carved a canyon through the crater rim,

00:34 filling the crater with water

00:35 and depositing sand and rocks that formed a delta.

00:39 On Earth, the record of such an ancient river and lake

00:41 would have been erased long ago.

00:43 That's why sending a robotic explorer

00:45 like Perseverance is so valuable.

00:47 Mars is a special place that preserves a unique record

00:49 of things that happened in the first billion years

00:51 of the solar system.

00:55 In this area, different rock layers

00:56 record different parts of the crater's history.

00:59 The flat, light-colored rocks were deposited

01:01 on the banks of a river,

01:02 flowing slowly across the landscape.

01:04 The boulders in the distance were deposited later

01:07 in what was likely a raging torrent.

01:09 And if this peculiar outcrop caught your attention,

01:13 it did ours as well.

01:14 It doesn't look like sediment at all.

01:16 Perhaps it's a remnant of a lava flow,

01:18 now mostly eroded away.

01:20 Lab equipment on Earth can accurately measure

01:21 when a volcanic rock was formed.

01:23 So if we can return a sample of this lava

01:25 to Earth in the future,

01:26 we may know when and for how long water flowed into Jezero.

01:30 From here, Perseverance will continue west.

01:35 In the distance, you can trace the tops

01:37 of the natural levees that formed

01:38 at the near and far banks of the river.

01:40 The rover will pass this area on its way upstream,

01:49 continuing toward this spot

01:50 where the river carved through the crater wall.

01:52 You can see the canyon on the horizon here.

01:54 From there, Perseverance will be well-positioned

02:01 to head south and ascend this natural ramp

02:04 that leads up and out of the crater.

02:06 We're lucky to have a route the rover can safely drive

02:08 up the rim right where we need it.

02:10 Starting the climb would mark a new

02:12 and exciting phase of the mission,

02:14 exploring rocks far older than those in Jezero

02:17 and produced in an entirely different way.

02:19 One tempting target are these light-colored rocks

02:21 partway up the rim.

02:23 They may have interacted with hot water

02:25 in a hydrothermal environment,

02:26 another exciting place to hunt for evidence of past life.

02:29 Since finishing its study of the crater floor,

02:33 Perseverance has been climbing the delta

02:35 and piecing together the history

02:36 of this once watery environment.

02:38 We've come a long way in nearly three years

02:40 of exploring and collecting samples,

02:42 but there's still so much more to investigate.

02:45 Follow the journey at mars.nasa.gov/perseverance.

02:49 (upbeat music)

02:51 (upbeat music)

02:54 (upbeat music)

02:56 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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