Rocks on the way up the sides of the crater, which are the ones that were the most visible from space, were igneous – the type that forms from lava. What’s more, the rocks were a lot older than they expected. After observing them in detail with Perseverance’s SuperCam, the rover’s geology team realized that these rocks were more than 4 billion years old.
On Earth, rocks that old would be weathered down by our climate. But on Mars, they are almost pristine, which means they are also easier to study. When the scientists did that, they discovered a color they were not expecting – green. Mars is known as the Red Planet for good reason – oxidation has formed a red tint to almost everything on the planet’s surface. Upon closer inspection, though, these igneous rocks were actually made of a mineral called olivine. Olivine is a slightly less spectacular version of a commonly known gemstone here on Earth – peridot.Olivine is also what makes the beaches on Hawai’i seem dark green, and it has the same effect on Mars.
It is also a fascinating window into what the earlier Earth might have been like, right around when life formed almost 4 billion years ago. Earth’s environment from that time is lost to us, changed irrevocably by the climate and tectonics over millions of years. But on Mars, the environment has remained largely untouched until Perseverance happened upon it.
Finding the rocks and conducting a preliminary analysis is just the first step. Further, more detailed analysis is needed before anything conclusive can be said about the environment of Jezero crater earlier in the solar system and whether it could have been habitable. But that is one of the primary goals of Perseverance and its team of dedicated geologists. This newest discovery is a step in the right direction.
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