Earth is covered in vegetation that hides these layers.” “We do see deposits like this on Earth, but they’re never as well exposed as they are here on Mars. “The wind has acted like a scalpel that has cut the tops off these deposits,” said Michael Lamb, river specialist and Perseverance science team collaborator at Caltech, in a statement. The rocky layers were likely much taller in the past but have been eroded by wind over time. Scientists aren’t sure whether the rows of rocks that appear to ripple across the landscape are like the shifting riverbanks of the Mississippi or the island-like sandbars of the Platte River in Nebraska. One of the mosaics shows a deposit dubbed “Skrinkle Haven,” where flowing water carved rock layers that remain billions of years later. Previous observations by the Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012 and is exploring Gale Crater about 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) away, revealed evidence of shallow streams rather than powerful rivers. Scientists have long been curious about the diverse types of waterways that once existed on Mars more than 3 billion years ago, when the planet was warmer and wetter. It’s the first time scientists have seen environments such as this on Mars. The curved layers of the fan suggest flowing water shaped them, and the latest images taken by the rover point to a deeper and more rapidly moving river than scientists expected on Mars. So here in Jezero, we have evidence of lakes, deltas and ancient rivers.” “With the rover, we’re actually moving through different environments that once had water associated with them. “This fan really represents the main history of water in the crater,” Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance’s deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told CNN.
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