NASA has released the clearest view of Mars yet, showing stunning blue rocks covering the Martian landscape.
Images, captured by the Perseverance rover as it continues to explore the Red Planet, are also revealed. “First of its kind” geological formation resting on the dried remains of an ancient lake bed.
dIrregular ark-blue volcanic basalt rocks were seen surrounding the mottled white rock, which was found to have a mineral composition unlike anything NASA has ever seen on Mars.
The NASA team operating the rover named this rock field ‘Mount Washburn’ after a mountain in Yellowstone National Park.
Most of the blue-black rocks seen on the surface of Mars, such as those at Mount Washburn, are volcanic basalt (above). The rocks are similar to the volcanic rock found beneath Earth’s oceans.
Perseverance, a remote-controlled mobile laboratory the size of a car, has been exploring the dusty basin of this asteroid impact site, called Jezero Crater, since February 2021.
Water once flowed at Jezero about 3.7 billion years ago, with evidence of a “palaeolake” and a long, lost river delta within the rim of this 45-kilometre-diameter crater.
These rivers transported fine-grained sand and mud of exactly the consistency known to preserve fossils on Earth to Jezero: fine clay that Perseverance had been sent to explore in NASA’s belief that this crater It may have once supported extraterrestrial life..
“Every once in a while, you’ll see something strange on the Martian landscape,” as a NASA planetary geologist puts it. Dr. Katie Stack Morgan from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory “And the team says, ‘Oh, let’s go there!’
Most of the blue-black rocks seen on the surface of Mars, such as those at Mount Washburn, are volcanic basalt.
‘Mars is mostly composed of rocks similar to terrestrial basalts called tholeiites,’ according to planetologist and geophysicist Dr. G. Jeffrey Taylor at the University of Hawaii, “which form most oceanic islands, mid-ocean ridges, and the seafloor beneath sediments (on Earth).”
But the white, speckled rock jutting out from the middle of this basalt took NASA’s Perseverance team by surprise.
The white, speckled rock, now called ‘Atoko Point’, stood out amidst this blue-black volcanic basalt where it took NASA’s Perseverance team by surprise.
“This was like the textbook definition of (chasing) something bright, very bright,” Dr. Stack Morgan said, “because it was very bright and white.”
Perseverance captured the photo with its Mastcam-Z, a three-dimensional array of cameras placed at human eye level on a six-and-a-half-foot mast atop the rover.
Mastcam-Z offers 2 megapixel quality, “similar to that of a consumer digital camera”, according to the specifications of the US space agency, which explains the sharp and clear image of this rock formation.
The camera’s 3D images offer a resolution of 0.0059 inches per pixel up close and 0.3 inches per pixel at maximum zoom.
NASA named the novel, dazzling white rock, which measures about 18 inches wide and 14 inches tall, ‘Atoko Point’ after a more than 8,000-foot cliff in the Grand Canyon.
Perseverance captured the photo with its Mastcam-Z, a three-dimensional array of cameras placed at human eye level on a six-and-a-half-foot mast atop the rover.
The path to ‘Atoko Point’ near ‘Bright Angel’ in Mars’ Jezero Crater
But it was the robotic explorer’s full suite of chemical analyzes and geological tools, SuperCam, that helped determine what a unique discovery the ‘Atoko Point’ rock actually was.
SuperCam’s two lasers and four spectrometers found enough mineral feldspar to confirm that this white rock was anorthosite, a type of rock that has long been theorized but never before documented as existing on Mars, Dr. Stack Morgan said.
Like basalts, anorthosites are also volcanic rocks, but they are richer in silica compounds, suggesting that this ‘Atoko Point’ stone may have emerged from a deeper subsurface than the rocks surrounding it.
Other examples of anorthosite could help determine whether ‘Atoko Point’ was washed into the crater through its ancient rivers or was formed underground by lava, and perhaps washed away by the impact that created Jezero Crater billions ago. of years.
“Seeing a rock like Atoko Point is one of those hints that ‘Yes, we have anorthosites on Mars,'” said Dr. Stack Morgan of NASA JPL. Mashable. “And this could be a sample of that lower crustal material.”
The NASA JPL researcher, deputy project scientist for NASA’s Mars 2020 mission that launched Perseverance years ago, said she hopes more finds like the rock will reveal details about what’s now beneath the surface of Mars and how it is. formed the planet.
“If we look at it later in the context of other rocks, it may give us an idea of how the first crust of Mars arose.”
