NASA Perseverance Mars rover investigates ‘extraordinary’ rock, zaps it with a laser
NASA’s Perseverance rover snapped a scrutinize of this extraordinary rock on March 28. If you search closely simply to the staunch of heart, you can have the selection to gaze a chain of puny marks where the rover’s laser zapped it.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
Mars is a haven for meteorites, and it is far in most cases necessary when a rover comes across one among those emissaries from home. Scientists are in the intervening time scrutinizing a rock beefy of holes noticed by NASA’s Perseverance rover. The rock bears a resemblance to meteorites seen in completely different locations.
NASA hasn’t declared what the rock is solely yet, but the Perseverance crew tweeted on Wednesday, “Whereas the helicopter is preparing, I cannot attend attempting out nearby rocks. This extraordinary one has my science crew shopping and selling a total bunch hypotheses.”
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The rover crew mentioned the rock is ready 6 inches (15 centimeters) prolonged and really handy home fans to search closely at the image to “place of abode the row of laser marks where I zapped it to learn extra.”
Perseverance is equipped with a rock-zapping laser designed to attend it secure files on Mars geology. Chances are you’ll presumably presumably presumably listen to the laser in motion as heard by a microphone. “Diversifications in the depth of the zapping sounds will present files on the physical structure of the targets, equivalent to its relative hardness or the presence of weathering coatings,” NASA mentioned when it shared the laser audio earlier in March.
Researchers are already throwing spherical some tips about the rock, in conjunction with that it could presumably presumably be a weathered piece of bedrock, somewhat of chunk of Mars from in completely different locations that was once flung by an impact tournament or a meteorite.
The crew has formulated many different hypotheses about this one — is it one thing weathered out of the native bedrock? Is it a chunk of Mars plopped into the online page from a a lot-flung impact tournament? Is it a meteorite? Or one thing else?
— NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) March 31, 2021
Perseverance is already hip to meteorites. There would possibly be a puny nick of a Martian meteorite built correct into a calibration target feeble by the rover’s Sherloc (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemical compounds) instrument. So NASA despatched a chunk of Mars serve to Mars.
The rover made time for the rock investigation while it be in the route of of unfolding the Ingenuity helicopter so it will set it down on the outside before what NASA hopes steadily is the first powered, controlled flight on another planet.
Between rocks and choppers, it be been an inviting week for the Perseverance mission.
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