If you didn’t have time to look at cool stones today, don’t worry. We support you.
In fact, this particular rock may even be unique. This was discovered by NASA’s Perseverance rover, which was exploring Jezero Crater on Mars, and has never seen anything like it on the top of Mars.
To be honest, there’s still a lot more Mars Still needs to be investigated further. Nevertheless, the zebra-striped rock mass is simultaneously surprising, fascinating, and, yes, you guessed it. very nice.
I imagined a rock September 13th By Perseverance as you climb the slope towards the crater rim. Like other interesting geological formations on Mars, the ground team here on Earth has named this rock Freyja Castle.
Freyja Castle is not that big. It is approximately 20 centimeters (8 inches) in diameter, slightly larger than the average length of an adult male hand. And its striking zebra-like shaded stripes pose an intriguing mystery.
Patience harnessed its power Mastcam-Z Take multispectral images of the rocks before continuing up the slope. From these images, scientists have made some guesses about what the rock is.
“Although our knowledge of its chemical composition is limited, early interpretations are that its striations may have been formed by magmatism and/or metamorphism.” writes planetary scientist Athanasios Kridalas. As Purdue University says in a NASA blog post:
“Freya Castle is a loose stone that is distinctly different from the bedrock beneath it, so it probably arrived here from somewhere else, perhaps rolling down the hill from a higher source. This possibility is exciting to us and we hope we continue to be.”Driving uphill, Perseverance encounters this new type of rock outcrop and provides more detailed measurements. You will be able to obtain ”
So far, that’s all we know about Freyja Castle. But we also know that this won’t be the last cool rock NASA’s Mars rover shows us. Earlier this year, Curiosity discovered pure sulfur just hanging in Gale Crater.
And the cheetah-like spots on the rock named Chebaya Falls resemble patterns in minerals here on Earth that are associated with biological activity. The Chebaya Falls pattern is likely non-biological, but it’s certainly fun to find something like it.
We hope that Perseverance can find the host rock of Freyja Castle and learn more about the geological processes of a world that is very different from our own.
