The Perseverance rover has found a weird green rock on Mars

By Georgina Torbet April 3, 2021

A rock identified by Persverance — A rock identified by Perseverance NASA

The big news from Mars this week is the preparations for the first flight of the Ingenuity helicopter, but while that’s going ahead, the Perseverance rover has been keeping itself busy by investigating rocks on the Martian surface near to its location. And the rover has found something strange: A weird green rock that has scientists puzzled.

The image, shown above, was shared on the official Perseverance rover Twitter account, with the team writing that the odd finding has them trading hypotheses. The rock is around 6 inches long and has both an unusual green color and shiny spots of unknown origin.

Recommended Videos

The Perseverance researchers are currently debating whether this rock comes from the area it was found in, or whether it might have been moved there from a different original location by an impact event of some kind. It could even have come from outside of Mars, such as a meteorite that came from elsewhere in the solar system and impacted Mars.

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

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

— NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) March 31, 2021

The rock has another nifty feature as well — you can see the line of marks created by the rover’s SuperCam instrument laser. The instrument is designed to perform a type of analysis called laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, in which a laser is fired at a target rock to turn a small amount of the rock into a plasma. The instrument can then detect the chemical composition of this plasma, which shows what the rock is composed of.

The laser used for this analysis is super powerful, able to heat its targets to 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit. And the instrument also includes a microphone, which records audio samples that are used to hear how far the laser is penetrating into a sample and can even give clues to the hardness of the rock.

The SuperCam instrument recently delivered its first science results, and now we’ll have to wait for it to discover more about this strange rock.

Topics

Georgina Torbet

Space Writer

Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…

Space

NASA’s axed moon rover could be resurrected by Intuitive Machines

An illustration of NASA's Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) on the lunar surface.

Lunar scientists were shocked and dismayed last month when NASA announced that it was canceling work on its moon rover, VIPER. The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover was intended to search the moon's south pole for evidence of water there, but NASA said that it had to ax the project due to increasing costs.

This week, an open letter to Congress called the cancellation of the mission "unprecedented and indefensible," and questioned NASA's assertion that the cancellation of the mission would not affect plans to send humans to the moon. Scientists argued that the mission was fundamental to understanding the presence of water on the moon, which is a key resource for human exploration, as well as an issue of scientific interest.

Space

Mars has ‘oceans’ worth’ of water – but it’s deep underground

More than 3 billion years ago, Mars was warm, wet, and had an atmosphere that could have supported life. This artist's rendering shows what the planet may have looked like with global oceans based on today's topography.

One of the key issues for getting humans to Mars is finding a way to get them water. Scientists know that millions of years ago, Mars was covered in oceans, but the planet lost its water over time and now has virtually no liquid water on its surface. Now, though, researchers have identified what they believe could be oceans' worth of water on Mars. There's just one snag: it's deep underground.

The research used data from NASA's now-retired InSight lander, which used a seismometer and other instruments to investigate the planet's interior. They found evidence of what appears to be a large underground reservoir of water, enough to cover the entire planet in about a mile of ocean. But it's inaccessible, being located between 7 to 13 miles beneath the planet's surface. The water is located in between cracks in a portion of the interior called the mid-crust, which sits beneath the dry upper crust that is drillable from the surface.

Space

Relive Mars rover’s ‘7 minutes of terror’ during landing 12 years ago

An animation showing the Curiosity spacecraft heading toward Mars.

At 1:31 a.m. ET on August 6, 2012, NASA’s Curiosity rover made a spectacular landing on the surface of Mars.

To mark the 12th anniversary, NASA has shared a video (below) in which members of the Curiosity team talk about how they achieved the remarkable feat, paying particular attention to the so-called “seven minutes of terror” during the final moments of descent.