NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover‘s Mastcam-Z camera recently captured bands of rocks that may have been formed by a very fast flowing, ancient river. The mosaic consists of 203 individual images that were stitched together after being transmitter from Mars and when viewed from the ground, the curved layers appear to ripple out across the landscape.
A second mosaic (below) depicts a separate location, Pinestand, that is part of the curvilinear unit and approximately a 450-meters from the first location, Skrinkle Haven. This isolated hill boasts sedimentary layers that curve skyward, some as high as 20-meters, and scientists believe they may also have been formed by a turbulent river. Their next objective is to peer below the surface, using the ground-penetrating radar instrument on Perseverance called RIMFAX (Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment).
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Those indicate a high-energy river that’s truckin’ and carrying a lot of debris. The more powerful the flow of water, the more easily it’s able to move larger pieces of material. It’s been a delight to look at rocks on another planet and see processes that are so familiar,” said Libby Ives, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
