🪐 Freezing, arid and lifeless, the dusty Jezero crater on Mars is an inhospitable desert.
Yet, 3.7 billion years ago it was full of water and could have harboured life, scientists believe
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telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/0…
🛰️The first analysis of images from Nasa’s Perseverance rover show the Jezero crater was once a huge 21-mile wide lake, which was fed by a river, and which suffered flash flooding
telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/0…
🦠However, researchers are most excited by the discovery of layers of fine-grained clay and mudstones at the site, because they could preserve traces of ancient life
telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/0…
Prof Sanjeev Gupta said: “We're not expecting to find fossils, but we could find evidence of microbial life."
🗣️“I think finding life is entirely likely. It would seem surprising that life only formed on Earth and these are definitely the right rocks to look for it.”
Zoomed images taken by Perseverance of the cliffs surrounding the crater show sloping rock beds sandwiched between horizontal layers that indicate rocky deposits from an ancient river
telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/0…
🌞The team says it suggests that there was steady water flow, consistent with a warm and humid Martian climate 3.7 billion years ago
telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/0…
🌄“If you look at these images, you’re basically staring at this epic desert landscape" said Benjamin Weiss, professor of planetary sciences in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences
telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/0…
🌊The lake was thought to be tens of feet deep
Boulders weighing several tons, were found to have come from outside the crater, and were probably part of the original bedrock.
💧The floods required to move the boulders were likely to have raged at 20 miles an hour
🌏As well as providing more details about Mars, sampling the boulders could give important clues about Earth’s early geology which has since been destroyed by tectonic activity
Read the full details of Perseverance's mission 👇
telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/0…
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