A Climate Puzzle
One big puzzle is how Mars’ climate worked back when this area was covered with liquid water. Because carbonates form due to chemical interactions in liquid water, they can provide scientists 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.”
