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Science

See where NASA zapped this odd Martian rock with a laser

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On day 37 of its Martian mission (known as “sol 37”), the Perseverance rover zapped a curious, holey rock with a laser 10 times. 

It wasn’t for sport. The laser is part of the rover’s SuperCam, which looms atop the car-sized robot like a crow’s nest on a ship. From distances of over 20 feet away, a laser strike onto rocks and soil, producing flickers of light. These flickers are excited atoms, and the SuperCam analyzes this light to glean if a rocky target might have preserved past signs of Martian life  — like certain organic materials microbes may have once munched on.

A holey, peculiar rock certainly struck the Perseverance science team as a place of interest. What type of rock is it? Why is it so holey?

“We thought we better check it out,” Roger Wiens, a planetary scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory who leads the team, told Mashable. “We’re trying to investigate the different types of rocks we see.”  

Without zooming in, it’s difficult to spot the laser marks. The line of laser marks can be seen in the red circle below:

The line of laser marks are visible in the red circle.

A zoomed-in view of the laser marks.

The rover has beamed back the results from the laser zapping, and Wiens said the Perseverance team is studying the rock’s composition. Could it be a meteorite from somewhere in the solar system? Is water responsible for eroding the holey rock? Might it be a volcanic rock?

“The team has formulated many different hypotheses about this one — is it something weathered out of the local bedrock?” NASA tweeted. “Is it a piece of Mars plopped into the area from a far-flung impact event? Is it a meteorite? Or something else?”

See Also: The Martian sounds recorded by the Perseverance rover, so far

NASA’s Perseverance team isn’t ready to release their conclusions quite yet, as they’re still discussing the possibilities. But there’s certainly going to be much more rock zapping in the weeks, months, and likely years ahead. Right now, Perseverance is in the middle of its landing spot, the Jezero Crater, a place NASA says was once flooded with water. 

Soon, Perseverance will make a slow, careful journey to a large dried-up river delta, where microbial life could have once survived on Mars in wet, clay soils — if life ever existed, anyway. 

“We’re about 1.5 miles away from the delta, as the Martian crow flies,” said Wiens. 

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Science

NASA Perseverance Mars rover investigates ‘odd’ rock, zaps it with a laser

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NASA’s Perseverance rover snapped a view of this odd rock on March 28. If you look closely just to the right of center, you can see a series of tiny marks where the rover’s laser zapped it.


NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Mars is a haven for meteorites, and it’s always notable when a rover comes across one of these emissaries from space. Scientists are currently scrutinizing a holey rock spotted by NASA’s Perseverance rover that bears a resemblance to meteorites seen elsewhere.

NASA hasn’t declared what the rock is just yet, but the Perseverance team tweeted on Wednesday, “While the helicopter is getting ready, I can’t help checking out nearby rocks. This odd one has my science team trading lots of hypotheses.”

The rover team said the rock is about 6 inches (15 centimeters) long and told space fans to look closely at the image to “spot the row of laser marks where I zapped it to learn more.”

Perseverance is equipped with a rock-zapping laser designed to help it collect data on Mars geology. You can listen to the laser in action as heard by a microphone. “Variations in the intensity of the zapping sounds will provide information on the physical structure of the targets, such as its relative hardness or the presence of weathering coatings,” NASA said when it shared the laser audio earlier in March.  

Researchers are already throwing around some ideas about the rock, including that it may be a weathered piece of bedrock, a little chunk of Mars from elsewhere that was flung by an impact event or a meteorite.

Perseverance is already hip to meteorites. There’s a tiny slice of a Martian meteorite built into a calibration target used by the rover’s Sherloc (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals) instrument. So NASA sent a piece of Mars back to Mars. 

The rover made time for the rock investigation while it’s in the process of unfolding the Ingenuity helicopter so it can set it down on the surface prior to what NASA hopes will be the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. 

Between rocks and choppers, it’s been an exciting week for the Perseverance mission.

Follow CNET’s 2021 Space Calendar to stay up to date with all the latest space news this year. You can even add it to your own Google Calendar.      



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Science

NASA Perseverance Mars rover investigates ‘odd’ rock, zaps it

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NASA’s Perseverance rover snapped a view of this odd rock on March 28. If you look closely just to the right of center, you can see a series of tiny marks where the rover’s laser zapped it.


NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Mars is a haven for meteorites, and it’s always notable when a rover comes across one of these emissaries from space. Scientists are scrutinizing a holey rock spotted by NASA’s Perseverance rover that bears a resemblance to meteorites seen elsewhere.

NASA hasn’t declared what the rock is just yet, but the Perseverance team tweeted on Wednesday, “While the helicopter is getting ready, I can’t help checking out nearby rocks. This odd one has my science team trading lots of hypotheses.”

The rover team said the rock is about 6 inches (15 centimeters) long and told space fans to look closely at the image to “spot the row of laser marks where I zapped it to learn more.”

Perseverance is equipped with a rock-zapping laser designed to help it collect data on Mars geology. You can listen to the laser in action as heard by a microphone. “Variations in the intensity of the zapping sounds will provide information on the physical structure of the targets, such as its relative hardness or the presence of weathering coatings,” NASA said when it shared the laser audio earlier in March.  

Researchers are already throwing around some ideas about the rock, including that it may be a weathered piece of bedrock, a little chunk of Mars from elsewhere that was flung by an impact event or a meteorite.

Perseverance is already hip to meteorites. There’s a tiny slice of a Martian meteorite built into a calibration target used by the rover’s Sherloc (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals) instrument. So NASA sent a piece of Mars back to Mars. 

The rover made time for the rock investigation while it’s in the process of unfolding the Ingenuity helicopter so it can set it down on the surface prior to what NASA hopes will be the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. 

Between rocks and choppers, it’s been an exciting week for the Perseverance mission.

Follow CNET’s 2021 Space Calendar to stay up to date with all the latest space news this year. You can even add it to your own Google Calendar.      



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Science

Odd stripes spotted by NASA satellite in Russia baffle scientist

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A NASA satellite orbiting the earth taking pictures has spotted something that has scientists stumped in Siberia’s cold Arctic reaches in Russia. Near the Markha River in Siberia, the earth has ripples that scientists don’t completely understand. NASA recently posted new images of the odd landscape to its Earth Observatory website, taken with the Landsat 8 satellite over several years.

The images show land on both sides of the river rippled with alternating dark and light stripes. The odd effect is visible in all four seasons but is more pronounced during the winter when white snow gives even more contrast to the pattern. NASA isn’t entirely sure what causes the pattern on the Siberian ground.

One potential explanation has to do with the frigid temperatures in the region spend 90 percent of the year covered in permafrost that occasionally thaws for brief intervals. NASA says land that continuously freezes, thaws, and freezes again can take on strange circular or striped designs called patterned ground. The effect results from the natural tendency of stones to sort themselves out over a freeze-thaw cycle.

NASA does admit that other examples of patterned ground tend to be much smaller in scale than what is seen in Siberia. Another potential explanation for the strange patterns is surface erosion. Geologist Thomas Crafford, with the US geological survey, told NASA that the stripes resemble a pattern in sedimentary rock known as layer cake geology.

Those patterns happen when melting snow or rain runs downhill, chipping away and flushing pieces of sedimentary rock into piles. This process can build slabs of sediment that look like slices of a layer cake. Crafford says that the darker stripes represent deeper areas, with the lighter stripes representing flatter areas. Exactly what causes the strange stripes will remain a mystery until the site can be studied up close.

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