The Perseverance rover is part of NASA's ambitious Mars Sample Return campaign, a joint venture with the European Space Agency (ESA) that aims to bring these Martian samples back to Earth for detailed study using lab equipment.
"These boulders offer a large surface area for visual investigation, allowing scientists to examine many potentially distinct rocks in a single image. The team remains open to any intriguing findings that may warrant closer examination and possible sampling," told one scientist from the research team.
"We're taking a page from the past," said Farley. "Prospectors looking for gold or diamonds in the old days often looked in rivers to determine whether there was any deposit of interest upstream. No need to hike up there to see – let the river do the work!"
"The rover is working to characterise the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith," the scientist concluded.
According to Murphy, "this finding indicates that the red planet once had relatively complex organic geochemistry. On Earth, such mineralogy is associated with the habitable environments that are capable of preserving signs of ancient life. But she warns that not all organics are biological in origin."
The experimental sample was collected from a region that has been formed by a river that carried these small fragments from different locations and later deposited them at the present site.
