The perseverance autonomous autonomous rover collected a rock sample on Mars, on the edge of the Jezero crater, which was characterized by NASA as “a unique treasure.”
The Perseverance Rover collects evidence since February 2021 Photo Archive
“The 26th picked sample, called Silver Mountain, presents textures I have never met”, According to a message on the official X account of the Perseverance mission, posted alongside a photo of the 2.9 centimeters, writes space.com.
The rocks in this area of the planet Mars are of huge scientific interest because they can open “a rare window to the distant past of the planet Mars.” According to a NASA statement.
The rocks in the area where the Perseverance Rover is currently believed to be from the depths of the red planet and that they have been thrown out of a strong impact with an asteroid produced by billions of years ago.
These rocks are rich in low calcium pyroxeni (LCP), according to the information provided by the DigitalTrends.com website. About these rocks it is believed to be fragments of early Martian crust and could be “Among the oldest rocks discovered anywhere in the solar system ‘according to the NASA statement.
Their study can help us understand what the planet Mars and even Earth, in the childhood of the Solar System, were. NASA has announced that this is the first sample dating from Noachian era, a period in the geological history of the planet Mars about 4 billion years ago, marked by frequent impacts with asteroids and comets that have formed many of the craters currently sprinkled with the red planet .
The Perseverance Rover was associated with Mars in 2021 near the Jezero crater, with the search for the traces left by the possible forms of life of Mars’s past, the collection of rock samples for a possible bringing them to Earth and testing new exploration technologies.
One of these technologies is the ingenuity helicopter, a mini-elicopter that follows, according to the mission program, to perform five test flights. After all, Ingenuity took off 72 times to the Martian sky and ended his flights only after a malfunction at Rotor.
During the 4 years spent on Mars, the Perseverance Rover has discovered rocks that have possible chemical evidence of water interaction in the geological past of the planet. While scientists are impatient for the samples collected by Perseverance to be brought to Earth, in order to be studied in detail, the fate of the Mars Sample Return program is still unknown due to the rising costs and the complexity of this mission.
After the costs of the mission increased to $ 11 billion and after the mission program was pushed until earlier than 2040, NASA began a review of the entire program and requested new proposals from the industry and the academic environment. NASA will decide on a new strategy in 2026.
Meanwhile, China has set her goal to launch her own return mission of some rock samples in 2028 and thus the first samples could reach Earth on the horizon of 2031.
