New results show how many different types of samples the agency’s geologists and future scientists working on the Mars Sample Return program will have to analyze.
The soil that NASA’s six-wheeled Mars rover, Perseverance, has been travelling on since arriving in February likely originated from red-hot lava, according to scientists on the project. The finding is significant because it might help researchers better comprehend and pinpoint key moments in Earth’s history, including those that occurred in Jezero Crater.
Scientists have also deduced that some of the crater’s rocks contain organic compounds and that they had interacted with water on several occasions throughout the millennia. On December 15, 2021, researchers from across the world shared their results with the press in a press conference held in conjunction with the American Geophysical Union’s annual autumn scientific meeting in New Orleans.
The rock surface may be abraded, or ground, using the drill at the end of Perseverance’s robotic arm so that other equipment, like PIXL, can analyze it. Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL) is an X-ray fluorescence instrument used to determine the elemental composition of rocks. Science team members using the rover’s drill to collect a core sample of a rock in South Sétah for PIXL analysis on November 12. According to PIXL analysis, the “Brac” rock sample has an unusually high concentration of massive olivine crystals that are completely encased by pyroxene crystals.
Perseverance is the first of many missions in the Mars Sample Return program, and it is currently collecting samples of Martian rock in order to analyze them for signs of ancient microbial life. So yet, only six of the rover’s 43 sample tubes have been sealed; these six tubes contain rock cores, Martian gas, and “witness” material to monitor any potential Earth contamination delivered by the rover. Missions like Mars Sample Return aim to bring back chosen tubes to Earth so scientists may investigate them with high-powered lab equipment that would be too cumbersome to take to Mars.
