Story at a glance
- Images taken from Mars are the subject of a new paper by NASA scientists.
- The paper is based off of images taken in February by NASA’s Perseverance rover from inside the Jezero crater.
- NASA scientists are studying water on the planet’s role in shaping its landscape and searching for evidence of life.
Images taken from Mars are the subject of a new paper by NASA scientists studying water on the planet’s role in shaping its landscape and searching for evidence of life.
The paper, published in the journal Science, is based off of images taken in February by NASA’s Perseverance rover from inside the Jezero crater. Scientists believe a river once flowed into a lake where the crater now exists. Based on the images taken by Perseverance, the crater’s cliffs mark what were once the banks of the delta, and the layers shown within the cliffs offer a glimpse into how it was formed.
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The bottom three layers indicate a once constant and steady flow of water, which suggests that the planet was “warm and humid enough to support a hydrologic cycle” close to 3.7 billion years ago.
Scientists hope to sample from the sediment in the base layer of the cliffs to examine it for signs of previous life on Mars.
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