[ad_1]
NASA’s Perseverance rover spotted a black and white striped rock on Mars last week, which surprised both scientists and the internet. This rock is said to be different from any rock seen on the planet before.
After discovering the rock, the space agency asked the question: “Is this a sign of exciting discoveries to come in the future?”
What does the Perseverance rover do?
The Perseverance rover is searching for ancient rocks that could tell mankind about the early history of Mars. It has been almost a month now since the rover began climbing the steep slopes leading to the crater rim to search for rocks.
Although the initial climb was slow due to difficult slopes, progress improved as Perseverance moved onto flatter sections.
From this view, the rover can now see early milestones of the mission, such as the iconic ‘Kodiak’ butte on the hazy horizon, covered in dust from nearby dust storms.
Discovery of this ‘Zebra Rock’:
While driving across gravelly terrain, team members noticed a pebble in the distance that had signs of unusual texture in the low-resolution NavCam images, and named it ‘Freya’s Castle’.
The team planned multi-spectral observations using the Mastcam-Z camera to get a closer look before leaving.
When this data was downlinked a few days later, after Perseverance had left the area, it became clear just how unusual this was!
About ‘Zebra Rock’
‘Freya Castle’ is about 20cm in diameter and has an attractive pattern of black and white stripes.
The internet immediately began to speculate about what this “zebra rock” could be. However, NASA said the science team thinks the rock has a texture that is different from anything seen before in Jezero Crater, and perhaps even nowhere else on Mars.
NASA said its knowledge of the chemical composition of Mars is limited, but preliminary interpretation is that the stripes may have been formed by igneous and/or metamorphic processes.
Since Freya Castle is a loose stone clearly different from the underlying bedrock, it most likely arrived here by rolling downhill from another location, possibly from an elevated source.
This prospect has NASA excited, as it hopes the Perseverance rover will encounter this new type of rock as it travels upward, allowing for more detailed measurements.
‘Freya Castle’ is just the latest in a series of interesting rocks found recently; since arriving around the crater rim, the team has noticed an increase in the diversity of rocks, such as the diverse collection of stones at ‘Mount Washburn’.
[ad_2]
