NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance has excavated a 16th specimen of an intriguing rock, embarking on its latest mission to explore the top of an ancient river delta. A newly collected, chalk-sized specimen was safely inserted into Perseverance’s stomach. NASA announced Friday (31 March). According to mission team members, it was drilled through the rock, which could possibly contain evidence of ancient microbial life, if life once existed. marcy.

Patience the size of a car collecting samples and looking for signs life on mars since then landed in crater lake on red planet in February 2021. The rover has discovered new landscapes as part of special science campaigns, the latest of which is a six-wheeled robot that explores the top of the ancient delta of the Jezero River.

On March 30, Perseverance’s 749th Martian day on the Red Planet, the rover used a drill on the tip of its 7-foot (2 meter) long robotic arm to drill a hole in a rock called “Beria” at the summit. Jerezo delta. According to a NASA statement, 30 minutes later the rover had a cylindrical piece of Martian rock held in one of 43 titanium sample tubes. Today, the rover gathered 19 of 38 planned samples(opens in a new tab), 16 of which were collected by drilling into Martian rocks.

“Back to chalk!” task team members shared via Perseverance Twitter account on Friday. “My pillar drill is working well and my team is excited about what this rock can hold.”

Scientists believe that the recently sampled Berea rock may have been formed when an ancient river carried the building blocks (the various sediments and minerals that make up the rock) from somewhere outside the crater down the lake. The latest example aboard Perseverance is an exciting victory for scientists. Berea rock is rich in carbonate minerals. create they are fantastic recorders of life as a by-product, as well as billions of years of evidence of it. (However, carbonates can also form as a result of abiotic processes, so in themselves they are not reliable evidence of life.)

“If there are biosignatures in this part of Jezero Crater, there may be one such rock that can hold its secrets,” Cathy Morgan, associate scientist of the Perseverance project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said March 31.

Carbonate rocks are formed when carbon dioxide and water react with normally found minerals. volcanic rockssuch as calcium and iron. So the fact that Berea rock is rich in carbonates can confirm that rivers, ponds and lakes flowed abundantly on the surface of Mars 3.5 billion years ago. Additionally, these bodies of water may support life, the evidence scientists hope to see in samples recently collected by the rover.