NASA's Mars Perseverance rover finds diversity, hints of microbial life in ancient lake bed rocks

NASA scientists said Thursday the Mars Perseverance rover found biologically-interesting rocks in an ancient lake bed that could indicate microbial life existed on the red planet billions of years ago.

After launching from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in July 2020, NASA successfully landed its second rover, Perseverance, on Mars in February 2021. Along for the ride was a 4-pound helicopter named Ingenuity that has been a wild success showing controlled flights can be made on Mars.

On Thursday, mission managers provided an update on what the rover had discovered while exploring 8 miles of the Jezero Crater. The area was likely a lake more than 3.5 billion years ago, which is why NASA landed the rover there, to search in an ancient habitable environment for evidence of life. 

The $2.4 billion Perseverance rover landed in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021, and has spent the past 18 months working its way toward the base of a fan-like delta cutting through the rim where water once rushed in to fill a broad, now-vanished pool the size of Lake Tahoe.

Perseverance is equipped with a suite of sophisticated instruments designed to study the ancient lakebed deposits, on the lookout for traces of past microbial life that might have filtered down to be preserved in what are now layers of sedimentary rock.

Ken Farley, a Perseverance project scientist at the California Institute of Technology, said researchers don't yet know the significance of the discoveries but added that it's "interesting" to find rocks with organic matter in the habitable environment of Jezero Crater.

"These rocks are exactly the kind of rocks we came to investigate, both with the rover and its scientific instruments and also to bring back to Earth so that they can be studied in terrestrial laboratories," he said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/tantalizing-mars-rock-samples-collected-perserverance-rover-rcna47927

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-mars-rover-perseverance-clues-about-possible-past-life/

https://www.foxweather.com/earth-space/nasa-mars-perseverance-rover-finds-hints-of-microbial-life-in-ancient-lake-bed-rocks

Links for B.C.

Visit My Website
https://bcbegley.com

Subscribe To My Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/bcbegley

Watch Me On YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGoU...

Follow Me On Twitter
https://twitter.com/BC_News1

Watch Me On Rumble
https://rumble.com/c/c-280191

Follow Me On Gab
https://gab.com/BC_Begley

Follow Me On Parler
https://parler.com/profile/Bcbegley20...

Watch Me On BitChute
https://www.bitchute.com/channel/FYML...

Subscribe To The Apocalypse Watch App
https://newapocalypsewatch.com