Having long broken its phonograph recording of firsts on Mars , the Perseverance rover , still pootling around sciencing the sh*t out of the Red Planet , has just lock and load its third sample distribution to send home to Earth . peer inside a rock music , Percy junk a lowly plot to get a smell at something no one has ever construe before : what lies under the control surface layer . In this case , it appears rock that carries a curious " greenish mineral " lie with as olivine .
" Another short piece of Mars to behave with me , " the rover ’s spokesperson on Earth revealed onsocial media . " My latest sample is from a rock loaded with the greenish mineral olivine , and there are several estimation among my science team about how it get there . Hypotheses are vanish ! scientific discipline prescript . "
In the roamer ’s enthusiasm to show that geology indeed Rock , it revealed a few Day in the beginning that it had " zeroed in on its next prey " with some image of the genuflect - away surface to reveal the rock ’s insides , which seem to show some concentrated minerals and deposit .
Olivine is magnesium iron silicate that make up most of Earth’smantle . It is green in color , famously on Earth the cause of Hawaii’sgreen sandPapak?lea Beach . Minerals like olivine are commonly found in solidify pieces of volcanic rock candy .
Jezero Crater , where Percy first landed , was in fact select because it wasonce an ancient lakebed , part of a huge river delta where mineral such as olivines and carbonate , and organic molecules gain . NASA is explore the correlation between olivine and carbonates , which typically shape when carbon dioxide mix with liquid water . Because Mars has no denture architectonics , geological formations that formed billions of years ago have n’t changed much today , offering us a fascinating insight into the planet ’s history and the potential habitableness of Mars .
As Percy ’s squad pointed out , hypotheses about how the olivine may have got there are wing . More proof the crater is a dry up lakebed or an explosive ash sediment from anancient vent ? Oh , to be a rainfly on the walls of NASA ’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as they get stuck into studying these rock samples in * checks calendar*2031 . Stay tune up !
