43 JULY 2023 WorldWide Drilling Resource® www.starironworks.com 257 Caroline Street Punxsutawney, PA 15767 800-927-0560 • 814-427-2555 Fax: 814-427-5164 SERVING THE WATER WELL INDUSTRY Serving the Drilling Industry 2023 JUBILEE Booth 205 What Can Core Samples from Mars Teach Us? Adapted from Information by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Scientists at NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) celebrated the first Mars drill sample taken by the Perseverance rover on the mission’s newest science campaign. The team explores and studies a new area with each campaign and, in this case, the rover is exploring the top of Jezero Crater’s delta. Perseverance has collected a total of 19 samples on the Martian surface as part of the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Mars Sample Return campaign. Scientists want to study the samples with powerful lab equipment on Earth to search for signs of ancient microbial life and to help understand the water cycle responsible for shaping the surface and interior of Mars. The rock core came from a rocky outcrop the science team calls “Berea.” It is believed Berea was formed from rock deposits carried downstream by an ancient river to this location. So, the material could have come from an area far beyond the Jezero Crater, and it’s one reason the team finds the rock so promising. “The second reason is that the rock is rich in carbonate,” said Katie Stack Morgan, deputy project scientist for Perseverance at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Carbonate rocks on Earth can be good at preserving fossilized lifeforms. If biosignatures were present in this part of Jezero Crater, it could be a rock like this one that could very well hold their secrets.” The mystery the team is trying to solve is how Mars’ climate worked when the area was covered with liquid water. Since carbonates form through chemical interactions in liquid water, the carbonates can give researchers a long-term record of changes in the planet’s climate. By studying the carbonate in the Berea sample, the science team could help fill in the gaps. “The Berea core highlights the beauty of rover missions,” said Perseverance’s project scientist, Ken Farley of Caltech in Pasadena. “Perseverance’s mobility has allowed us to collect igneous samples from the relatively flat crater floor during the first campaign, and then travel to the base of the crater’s delta, where we found fine-grained sedimentary rocks deposited in a dried lakebed. Now we are sampling from a geologic location where we find coarse-grained sedimentary rocks deposited in a river. With this diversity of environments to observe and collect from, we are confident that these samples will allow us to better understand what occurred here at Jezero Crater billions of years ago.” With this latest sample stored safely in a sample tube in the rover’s belly, the six-wheeler will continue to climb Jezero’s sedimentary fan toward the next bend in the dry riverbed, a location the science team is calling “Castell Henllys.” This image shows the Berea outcrop where the Perseverance is collecting rock cores from an ancient river delta in the Jezero Crater, a fan-shaped area where, billions of years ago, a river once flowed into a lake and deposited rocks and sediment. Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech. ENV
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