NASA scans of Mars’ Jezero Crater confirm lake sediment layers that could contain evidence of ancient microbial life on the red planet.
VICE
The latest scans of the Martian Jezero crater by NASA’s Perseverance rover have confirmed what scientists previously suspected—that there was once an ancient lake there. The findings offer renewed hope that we might find traces of life in the crater, which could be revealed in rock samples.
In a study published Friday in Science Advances, scientists used ground-penetrating radar —which allows them to peer through layers of rock 20 meters below the surface of the crater’s western delta—to paint a picture of the crater’s geological history.
At some point in the past, parts of the crater wore away before it filled with water, forming a lake. That water later subsided again before flooding back in, each time either carrying sediment in or taking it out of the crater. This pattern of deposition and erosion showed up as regular, horizontal bands on the radar’s images.
The patterns match up with earlier images taken by cameras on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Previous studies that analyzed those images taken from space had concluded that the sediment layers came from erupting Martian volcanoes rather than water flow.
“This fits our expectations or hopes about what these layers might be like. The fact that we see this in the radar images is exciting,” David Paige, lead author on the latest study and who’s team had previously theorized the layers came from a lake, told Motherboard.
Figuring out how the sediment got to the crater is important, said Paige, because it will help scientists more accurately analyze the rock and dust samples that the Perseverance Rover is currently collecting. “The rover observations are more reconnaissance. They’re not going to provide any definitive answers on their own,” he said.
