Chinese researchers announced new scanning results of the Zhurong rover landing site in Utopia Valley. During the trip, at a depth of about 35 meters, the rover recorded strange objects resembling irregular polygonal wedges.

The objects vary in size from a few centimeters to tens of metres. Scientists believe the embedded polygons formed billions of years ago as a result of freezing and thawing cycles of rocks on Mars. However, they may be volcanic formations that emerge after the cooling of lava flows.

The researchers write that the polygonal landscape required a very cold environment and that its formation was associated with a significant and drastic change in the planet’s climate.

“The possible presence of water and ice necessary for the freeze-thaw process in the asteroids could be the result of moisture migration caused by cryogenic suction from the subsurface horizon on Mars, airborne snowfall, or vapor diffusion to deposit pore ice,” the study said. the team suggested.

A previous study of Zhurong radar data had shown that multiple floods during the same time period had created several layers of soil beneath Utopia’s surface.

Scientists from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who worked with the Zhurong data, added that the rover’s ground-penetrating radar provides an important complement to on-orbit radar research. It allows local details of subsurface structures and soil composition to be obtained at depths of approximately 100 meters throughout the rover’s passage. True, each of his findings leaves more questions but no answers.

Zhurong landed on the Red Planet on May 15, 2021, making China the second country to successfully land a rover on Mars. The duration of its primary mission was three Earth months, but the rover successfully operated for just over one Earth year before entering planned hibernation in the spring of 2022. Source