(ORDO NEWS) — On the 3800th Martian day of its stay on the Red Planet, the Curiosity rover discovered a “hardcover book”. But in fact, it is an ordinary Martian rock, consisting of solid rock, but in appearance it resembles an open book. On April 15, NASA‘s rover came across an interesting find, writes Space.
Scientists at NASA believe that the strange shape of Martian rocks like this one is due to the influence of water that seeped into the area billions of years ago – when the Red Planet was much wetter.
Now the climate on Mars has become much drier. According to scientists, after many years of exposure to the wind, the softer material was blown away, and only the harder material remained, which gave the stone a resemblance to an ordinary book.
Exploration of Mars with the help of robots
Curiosity has been exploring Martian Gale Crater since August 2012. During this time, he was able to find evidence that liquid water existed on Mars in the distant past, and also discovered potential evidence that organic life could once have existed on the Red Planet.
Scientists will be able to study Martian life in local rocks after the return to Earth at the beginning of the next decade of samples collected by another rover, Perseverance, which recently spotted traces of ancient turbulent rivers on Mars.
Perseverance landed in Jezero Crater in February 2021 alongside NASA’s tiny Ingenuity helicopter. The rover is studying Jezero’s geology, looking for signs of past life on Mars, and collecting samples for a future return to Earth.
NASA plans to send a group of astronauts to Mars in the next decade. It is expected that this will be a much longer and more complex mission, and therefore scientists are already engaged in research that will help to conduct it as efficiently as possible.
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