NASA's Perseverance rover confirms Mars had a lake 3.7 billion years ago

NASA’s Perseverance rover, which was waved off to Mars’ Jezero crater in February 2021, has confirmed that crater once housed giant lake billions of years ago. According to study published in Journal Science, scientists reached this conclusion after analysing photographic data sent by rover in three months after landing. Perseverance touched down crater with an aim to look for signs of life and collect Martian samples to send it back to Earth.

‘Jezero’ dried out 3.7 billion years ago

Although scientists believe that red planet housed a massive lake that was fed by a steadily flowing river, data shows that crater, in fact, entire Mars, dried out 3.7 billion years ago. As per a report by Massachusetts Institute of Techlogy, study of Perseverance’s ims pointed out aforementioned points even before rover started scanning entire crater region. Besides this, ims also revealed that Jezero crater endured flash floods in past, which had swept massive boulders that can still be found near crater, as per MIT. 

Benjamin Weiss, professor of planetary sciences in MIT’s Department of Earth was reported saying, "re’s t a drop of water anywhere, and yet, here we have evidence of a very different past. Something very profound happened in planet’s history.” Citing  study's co-lead author Nicolas Mangold, ar report by .com suggested, that lake was about 100 meters lower than what previous orbital data had shown.

w that evidence of Jezero housing a lake has come to light, scientists will w be looking for hints about Mars' climatic evolution. y believe that if planet had lakes, life forms must also have thrived in those years. According to MIT, Perseverance will w collect samples of sediment which will later be sent to Earth in a hunt for Martian biosignatures. 

Perseverance rover and its adventures

Perseverance landed on Mars on February 18, 2021, after travelling 471 million kilometres. Its first three months were inactive as NASA engineers thoroughly checked all its equipment before y put it to work. MIT revealed that photographs that proved existence of a lake in Jezero were taken during this period by rover's two cameras, Mastcam-Z and SuperCam Remote Micro-Imr (RMI). 

Currently, rover is waiting for  two-week solar conjunction to end and will perform jobs like watching for dust devils and analysing wear. 

(Im: @NASAMars/Twitter)