Perseverance makes a strange discovery while roaming the Martian surface

 

unless you've been living under a rock  you know that after seven months of  hurtling through space at 24  600 miles per hour and surviving the  seven minutes of terror descent  into the martian atmosphere the  perseverance rover has finally touched  down on mars  so what's it found so far  welcome to fact nominal and today we're  listing all the breakthroughs so far  in nasa's perseverance rover makes  strange discovery  while roaming the martian surface  the mission aim simply put the  perseverance is on mars to do  two main tasks search for signs of life  and  poop out tiny soil sample cash tubes  that will then be gathered up at a later  date by another rover to bring back to  earth  but that may be over simplifying it just  a bit  this mission has the potential to make  the greatest contribution to scientific  knowledge  and space discovery possible and that's  to answer the age-old question  of whether humanity is alone in the  universe  is there life beyond earth  a busy month the rover wasted no time in  pulling up its sleeves and getting  right to work it's focused on geology  right now during this initial phase and  is  taking happy snaps of the surrounding  rock formations and  close-ups of the rocks and soil that  litters the surface of the red planet  it's also been analyzing the nearby  rocks and sending the findings of the  chemical analysis back to earth for the  big brain  buffins at nasa to study interpret and  draw findings from  the main experiments will commence in a  few months time after the sensitive  scientific instruments on board the  perseverance are tested  and calibrated to ensure absolute  accuracy  preparations and test flights will also  be made by its onboard drone  the ingenuity which will technically be  the first helicopter to fly on an alien  world  what's ahead the main event is  undoubtedly the hunt for  evidence of past life in time the prep  work on the dill bit  close-up camera and chemical sensor  array will be complete  and it will be time to start getting  some answers  the perseverance will need to travel  from its landing site near the outskirts  of the gizero crater  40 miles towards the interior of what  scientists think  was an ancient river delta the abundance  of clay colloids and an uncanny  resemblance to the  nile river delta here on earth means  it's the most likely place to uncover  fossilized remains of ancient microbial  martian life but all this doesn't go  down  till june so you're gonna have to be  patient  what do we know so far taking a look at  the area immediately surrounding the  landing site  it's clear there are light-colored rocks  poking out from a darker colored soil  a laser spectrometer aboard the  perseverance has done a preliminary  analysis  and discovered that two of these rocks  named moz and yigo  navajo for mars and diligent are  chemically similar  to basalt found on earth a rock formed  from molten lava  the laser zaps the rock and atomizes a  minute amount of material that is then  analyzed by the spectrometer  think of the nose of a bloodhound paired  up with buzz lightyear's ray gun  so far perseverance has noted signs that  water  had been captured inside the rock during  the cooling process and gradual  solidification  this may be evidence that when liquid  water existed on mars  it had a hot active and volcanic molten  core  with loads of active volatile volcanoes  on the surface  looking at the wind erosion on one of  the rocks they follow a northwesterly  pattern  on par with major wind pattern models  calculated based on what we  think are circulation patterns on mars  the other rock appears to be smoothened  as though it was shaped by tumbling  along the bottom  of one of the rivers that fed the gizero  crater delta  bolstering the current working theory on  which the entire mission was based