NASA’s Mars rover made a “strange” and fascinating discovery on the Red Planet – a small green rock, full of craters.
Wednesday’s discovery prompted Perseverance’s tools to look more closely, and scientists are “trading a lot of hypotheses.” according to the rover’s Twitter page.
“While the helicopter is getting ready,” the account said, referring to a separate mission of the Ingenuity helicopter, “I can’t help but check the nearby rocks.
“This weird has my science team that makes a lot of assumptions,” he continued.
“It is about 6 centimeters long. If you look closely, you may see the string of laser signs I shot to find out more. ”
The rover’s laser is part of the SuperCam instrument, one of the seven scientific instruments on board the robot, according to Space.com.
The information gathered by the laser could help scientists figure out if the small green Martian rock formed instead or was transported to Jezero Crater – an old lake bed – by the movement of water, a meteor or another. type of “impact”. event.”
“Is it something degraded from the local bedrock? Is a piece of Mars thrown into the area by a distant impact event? Is it a meteorite? Or something else ?, ”, as the rover’s Twitter account explained.
Scientists hope that Perseverance will be able to find a suitable launch site for his mini-helicopter by the end of the month to further explore the Red Planet.
The $ 2.7 billion Mars 2020 mission began in February and is expected to last several years, eventually preparing NASA for human exploration of Earth’s planetary neighbor.