NASA’s Perseverance rover recently made headlines by dropping samples collected on Mars to return to Earth, and has recently begun its journey to the site of an ancient river on Mars, while another NASA rover, Curiosity. After a decade since the beginning of his mission, recently New evidence for the existence of water discovered on the red planet.
The Curiosity mission launched on Mars in 2012, and its great success led to the design of NASA’s new Mars rover, Perseverance. Curiosity landed in the mouth of the Gale pit due to the presence of sediments due to the possible presence of water in the past. After landing, Curiosity started moving towards Mount Sharp, which is the central peak of this pit.
The rover is equipped with tools to evaluate the Martian soil and weather in order to find evidence of life around this crater. In this regard, understanding the role of water and finding evidence of its existence is one of the main elements of this mission. Last year, Curiosity reached a sulfate-bearing unit in Mount Aeolis.
In this regard, scientists give the possibility that this region, which also contains a lot of salts, already contains evidence of the existence of water and life on this planet, as the planet Mars began to dry. However, the team of NASA researchers did not expect to find evidence in this regard.
The Curiosity rover has sent images of the wavy and hard rock texture of this area, which is likely to be the end of a blue river, to NASA, and scientists and the team of researchers at NASA’s Jet Laboratory have acknowledged that these documents are the best evidence so far about the existence of water. In this area on Mars, the entire mission has been achieved by them.
The Curiosity rover has discovered new evidence about a kilometer above the base of Mount Aeolis. In this regard, it has been said that due to the hardness and thickness of the stones, Curiosity could not sample it. The Curiosity rover team is still looking to find an area with softer rocks to sample and analyze.
Unlike the Perseverance rover, which stores collected samples for return to Earth, Curiosity is not equipped with the necessary hardware to do so and only examines the sample in its internal laboratory. However, scientists and researchers expect more discoveries in this regard.
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