Yeah, maybe it once looked like Earth. Now that it’s been confirmed that there was a lake on Mars, scientists are ecstatic. Analysis of the Jezero crater proved it. Today it is a dry, wind-eroded depression. But 3.7 billion years ago it was fed by a river.
Rivers leaving their mark
Images from the Perseverance rover confirm other findings The crater suffered flash flooding. They washed large boulders from dozens of kilometers upstream into the lake bed. The images were taken from inside the crater. The rocks outcrop inside the crater on its western side. This resembled river deltas on Earth: layers of sediment are deposited in a fan shape as the river feeds into a lake.
The river delta fed a lake that was calm for much of its existence. A drastic change in climate caused episodic flooding late in the lake’s history.
“It is now the most desolate place to visit,” Benjamin Weiss says in a statement. He is a professor of planetary science at MIT. There’s not a drop of water anywhere. Here we have evidence of a very different past. Something very profound happened in the planet’s history”.
Searching for life
Perhaps the sediments have traces of ancient aquatic life. Perseverance will look for places to collect and preserve sediments. Scientists will be able to analyze them for Martian bio-signatures.
“Now we have the opportunity to look for fossils,” says Tanja Bosak. She is an associate professor of geobiology at MIT. It will take some time to get to the rocks for signs of life. So it’s a marathon, with a lot of potential.”
At some point the crater underwent flash floods that deposited large boulders in the delta. The lake dried up over billions of years. The wind eroded the landscape, leaving the crater we see today.
Now it’s been confirmed that there was a lake on Mars. How far are we from confirming that there was life as well?
