Mars Perseverance Radar Discovered an Inclined Rock on Jezero Crater

Perseverance's radar discovered that the rock layers beneath the Red Planet's crater are oddly inclined, according to a recent study published in Science Advances by a research team led by the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Oslo. These peculiar segments might be sedimentary deposits from an underground lake or lava flows that slowly cooled.

(Photo: Kevin Gill/via Wikimedia Commons )
Perseverance Selfie

Perseverance Investigation Goals

Perseverance chooses the Jezero Crater as a landing site to investigate the significant rock and clay mineral deposits deposited near its western side. The Jezero Crater, roughly 45 km (28 mi) in diameter and situated in the Syrtis Major Planum between the Northern Lowlands and the Southern Highlands, is thought to have originally been a lake.

This project, like Curiosity, seeks to learn more about the times when flowing water existed on Mars' surface. This helps scientists to understand better how and when Mars has the freezing and arid quality it has today.

According to their study, the team consulted the first data obtained by the Radar Imager for Mars subsurFAce eXperiment (RIMFAX). The radar performed the first rover-mounted ground-penetrating radar survey of the Martian subsurface.

This survey was carried out while the rover was making its initial 3-kilometer (1.85-mile) hike across the Jezero Crater. It provided continuous data on the electromagnetic properties of the bedrock structure beneath the crater to a depth of 15 meters (49 feet). The resulting radar images revealed layered sequences with up to 15-degree downward dips.

Researcher Statement

In a recent ULCA Newsroom release, David Paige, a UCLA professor of Earth, planetary, and space sciences and one of the RIMFAX's leads researchers, stated that they were surprised to find rocks stacked at an inclined angle on the crater floor. He predicted they would come across horizontal rocks. The fact that they are tilted this way indicates a more complex geologic history. They could be the remains of an older delta deposit buried beneath the crater floor or the result of molten rock rising to the surface.

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Analysis of the Latest Peserverance Data

After analyzing the data, the research team discovered that layered rock was common throughout the Perseverance survey area. Even more perplexing, they found highly reflective rock layers tilting in multiple directions in the inclined areas.

The most likely explanation for the angled layers they observed is an igneous (molten) origin, in which magma underground deposited rock layers that cooled and solidified over time.

However, the layers could be sedimentary, a phenomenon that frequently occurs in Earth's aqueous environments.

When the samples collected by Perseverance are returned to Earth for analysis, the data collected by RIMFAX will be precious. Understanding what lies beneath the Jezero Crater and how it formed will provide the context to characterize the samples.

This will help scientists understand how and when Mars had flowing water on its surface, how long it lasted, and whether it was intermittent. It will also reveal how and when Mars transitioned to its current extremely cold and dry environment.