The Perseverance Mars Rover has collected another soil sample from Mars. This time the sample has been photographed with a unique geological feature.
“My latest sample is from a rock loaded with the greenish mineral olivine,” the rover’s official Twitter account wrote in an update today, “and there are several ideas among my science team about how it got there.”
“Hypotheses are flying!” the car-sized rover added on its Twitter before concluding that “Science rules.”
The mineral seen in the photograph is generally found in solidified pieces of lava or magna on Earth, known as igneous rock.
Correlation between the olivine and carbonates is being studied by scientists at NASA. These are unique minerals that are found when carbon dioxide interacts with liquid water.
Perseverance rover landed on Mars in February 2021 in the Jezero crater. It is a dried-up ancient lake that gives away significant indicators of life on the red planet. In addition, it features a wealth of carbonate deposits.
Perseverance’s landing site was full of olivine deposits, and this fact has had scientists at NASA scratching their heads because nobody can tell how it reached here. One suggestion is that it might result from an explosive ash deposit — or verifies that the Jezero crater is indeed a dried-up lake basin.
The Perseverance had trouble collecting its first sample. Now, it has collected two samples and is letting us into the past of the red planet. The rover is our first infiltrator, which will tell us massive loads about Mars’ eventful history.