NASA’s Perseverance rover confirms the presence of an ancient lake on Mars, and it may hold clues to past life
Reported by Samantha Mathewson
Artist’s impression of a Martian lake
© Getty
Evidence of ancient lake sediments at the base of Mars’ Jezero crater offers new hope for finding traces of life in samples collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover. Perseverance touched down on 18 February 2021 inside the crater, which is believed to have once hosted a large lake and river delta. The rover has been scouring the crater in search of signs of past life and collecting and caching dozens of samples along the way for a possible future return to Earth. Using the rover’s Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment (RIMFAX), researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and the University of Oslo revealed new clues about how sediment layers formed over time on the crater floor. “From orbit we can see a bunch of different deposits, but we can’t tell for sure if what we’re seeing is their original state, or if we’re seeing the conclusion of a long geological story,” David Paige, RIMFAX’s deputy principal investigator, said. “To tell how these things formed, we need to see below the surface.”