This is stated in the press release of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), as Ukrinform reports.

“Celebrating its 1,000th Martian day on the Red Planet, NASA’s Perseverance rover recently completed its survey of an ancient river delta that contains evidence of a lake that filled Jesero Crater billions of years ago,” JPL said. said.

The average duration of a solar day on Mars is 24 hours 39 minutes 35 seconds, and on Earth a solar day lasts 24 hours.

Additionally, the six-wheeled device has collected a total of 23 samples as of today, revealing the geological history of this region of Mars.

One sample, called “Lefroy Bay,” contains large amounts of fine-grained silica, a material known to preserve ancient fossils on Earth.

Another, Otis Peak, contains significant amounts of phosphate, which is often associated with life.

Both of these samples are rich in carbonate, which can preserve information about the environmental conditions at the time the rock formed.

“We chose Jezero Crater as the landing site because orbital images showed a delta; clear evidence that the crater was once filled with a large lake. “The lake is a potentially habitable environment, and the delta rocks are ancient,” said Perseverance Project Scientist Ken Farley of the Cal Institute of Technology. “It is the perfect environment to embed evidence of life in the geological record as fossils,” he said.

Jezero crater was formed on Mars by an asteroid impact about 4 billion years ago.

As Ukrinform reported, Perseverance was sent to Mars along with the Ingenuity helicopter as part of a NASA research mission on February 18, 2021.

One of its missions is to collect rock samples on Mars that will be brought back to Earth by a special joint mission of the European Space Agency and NASA.