Origin of Atoko Point, the First Colored Rock on Mars
NASA’s Perseverance rover found colored rocks in Jezero Crater, Mars. What is the origin of these colored rocks on Mars?
This is the first discovery of colored rocks, after years of Mars exploration have never found colored rocks.
NASA, on its official website, explained that this discovery began after Perseverance chose a new route while exploring Mars. This spacecraft detoured through the desert to avoid large rocks that would hinder its journey.
This change in route not only shortened the travel time to get to the area dubbed Bright Angel, but also gave the team of scientists the opportunity to find interesting geological facts in an ancient river flow.
Evan Graser, Perseverance’s deputy strategic route planner who leads at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said his team used rover imagery to plan a journey of about 30 meters at a time.
They relied on Perseverance’s automatic navigation system, or AutoNav, to take over.
But as the rocks grew, AutoNav often decided the journey was not going its way and stopped, diminishing the chances of arriving on time at Bright Angel.
With AutoNav’s guidance, Perseverance traveled 200 meters to its stop, Mount Washburn. This is a hillside covered with large boulders, some of which have never been seen before on Mars.
Brad Garczynski, one of the mission’s science leaders, said of all the rocks, “one really caught our attention.”
They later named the rock Atoko Point.
About 45 centimeters (18 inches) wide and 35 centimeters (14 inches) tall, the mottled, light-colored rock stood out among the darker rocks. Analysis by Perseverance’s SuperCam and Mastcam-Z instruments indicated that the rock was composed of the minerals pyroxene and feldspar.
In terms of the size, shape, and arrangement of its mineral grains and crystals, and likely its chemical composition, Atoko Point was on a different level.
Some Perseverance scientists speculate that the minerals that make up Atoko Point were produced in a subsurface magma body that was likely exposed at the crater rim.
The team speculates that the pale rock may have been transported from another part of the planet via an ancient river, or formed underground by a magma body before eventually being exposed through erosion.
The researchers add that while Atoko is the first colored rock seen on Mars, it almost certainly won’t be the last. Perseverance is continuing its mission to the rim of Jezero Crater.
Perseverance landed on Mars in February 2021, and has since been exploring Jezero Crater, an area thought to have once been an ancient lake. The rover’s primary mission is to look for signs of ancient life, and it has collected 24 geological samples for study.
The current journey through Jezero Crater is part of Perseverance’s fourth exploration of carbonate and olivine minerals along the crater rim. On Earth, carbonate is typically found on the shallow surfaces of freshwater lakes, formed when carbon dioxide reacts with water.
