Photo from NASA’s Mars Rover shows where the ancient lake and river can join

NASA’s Perseverance Rover captured a spectacular image of an area near its landing site that scientists believe was the site of an old Mars smear and river.

The landing site of the Rover, which NASA named after the late science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler, lies in the 28-kilometer-wide Jezero Crater, which researchers say was a river delta billions of years ago – making it a promising place. to look for signs of ancient microbial life.

On February 22, Perseverance snapped an image from its landing site showing the remains of a fan-shaped deposit of sediments, known as a delta, using its Mastcam-Z camera system.

According to NASA, scientists believe that this delta remains from the confluence between an ancient river and lake that once lay in the crater.

In the image, the delta remnant is the elevated area of ​​a dark brown rock in the center of the shot. The remnant is located about 2.2 km west of the landing site Octavia E. Butler.

The visible portion of the remnant is about 660 feet wide, NASA said. The colors in the photo are an approximation of what we would see with human eyes if we looked at the geological feature on Mars.

The photo is the first high-resolution panorama of the Mastcam-Z system, the ‘main eye’ of the rover, according to Jim Bell, the instrument’s chief investigator.

Katie Stack Morgan, deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, discussed the virtual teleconference on Friday: “The rocks in the foreground may be similar to those in and around the Rover landing site. But I would like to draw attention. on the rocks in the hill in the background.

“These rocks look strikingly different in that you can resolve layering in the rock you see in this look. These resistant boulders were probably deposited by rivers flowing into the old Lake Jezero, and scientists in the team are working hard to make sense of that. and the origin of such rocks that we see for the very first time on the land at the landing site. “

But before the rover can explore the delta, the Perseverance team must work out how they can get there. Morgan said the science team is currently working with engineers to determine the best route – ie the safest, most efficient and scientifically most interesting route – to drive to the delta.

After the rover arrived at the mouth of the river that Jezero had entered, Morgan said he would probably deposit his very first monster depot.

The rover is capable of collecting samples and depositing them in special tubes while recording them on the surface. Future missions to Mars will hopefully be able to pick up these samples and send them back to Earth for detailed analysis.

On March 4, the rover completed its first ride on Mars and traveled 21.3 feet above the surface in a mobility test that served as an important milestone for the early part of the mission.

During the first two weeks of its mission, the rover had already sent about 7,000 images back to Earth, “including our first view of some geological targets of exploration that the rover brought to Jezero,” Morgan said.