New data from the NASA’s Perseverance rover missionon Mars, corroborate that the Jezero crater had habitable conditions more than 3,000 million years ago, as the orbital images already pointed out.
Three of its instruments confirm that had liquid water and carbonates in a sedimentary geological environment rich in organic compounds, reported the Sync news agency.
Jezero Crater on Mars was selected as the landing site for the Perseverance rover because images from orbiters such as NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or from ESA’s Mars Express mission, suggested that it harbored a lake long ago. billions of years.
This week they were published in the scientific journals Science and Science Advances three articles in which are offered new results collected by Perseverance in this Martian crater, and all point to the possibility that it was habitable in the past.
The data were collected with three instruments: the Mastcam-Z camera system and the PIXL and Sherloc spectrometers.
One of the authors of the three papers, Alberto González Fairén, researcher at the Center for Astrobiology (CSIC-INTA) and Cornell University in New Yorkexplained that the in situ analysis of the rover at Jezero revealed “a large amount of detail that was not appreciable from the orbiters.”
Long-distance imaging confirmed that Jezero is a type of delta where the river water and the lake water have the same density.
Igneous rocks in the crater and sedimentary rocks in the delta
“Second, the PIXL data indicates that The rocks at the bottom of the crater are igneous (originate when magma cools and solidifies, such as volcanic ones) and that they were formed before there was a river, a lake and a delta there”, pointed out González Fairén.
Therefore, combining data identified “two types of materials in Jezero: igneous rocks in the bottom of the crater, and sedimentary deposits in the delta”.
the chambers of Mastcam-Z instrument They also confirmed that the Igneous rocks at the bottom of the crater formed through two different processes: a part in the depths of the subsoil from magma that cooled slowly, forming characteristic olivine crystals (semi-precious stone); and the other, from volcanic activity on the surface.
“The large olivine crystals exhibit fractured textures, and the data suggests that they were exposed to at least two different periods of interaction with water,” explained the astrobiologist.
And he clarified: “At first, the interaction was with the carbonated water that circulated filling the lake, which dissolved the olivine and precipitated in the form of carbonates. Much later, distinct periods of interaction (at least two) with small brines left patches of concentrated salts as the fluids evaporated, and this aqueous alteration led to the production of amorphous silicates, sulfates, and chlorine salts.”
While, the sherloc instrument allowed to identify aromatic organic compounds in rocks of Jezero from two different ancient aqueous environments.
Finally, the spectroscopic analysis allowed to identify the presence of aromatic organic compounds in the rocks of the Jezero crater.
Its distribution is spatially correlated with that of secondary mineralsand appear associated with both carbonates and sulfates, which issuggests two times of formation of organic compounds: two different ancient watery environments.
“Therefore, the Perseverance analyzes now being published support the picture that Jezero formed a habitable enclave more than 3 billion years ago, in which liquid water and carbonate precipitation existed in an organic-rich sedimentary geologic environment. ”, concluded González Fairén.
Samples to analyze on Earth
now the rover Perseverance is collecting samples of the different types of rocks of this martian crater to bring them to Earth for analysis.
The collected fragments of igneous rocks will serve to accurately date the age of the Jezero materials and the temporal sequence of its geological events.
On the other hand, the sedimentary samples help to search for potential indicators of biological activity on Mars in the past.
Specifically, to establish the formation processes of the organic compounds that were identified.
