Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

The Perseverance rover has found a weird green rock on Mars

Georgina Torbet
By
A rock identified by Persverance
A rock identified by Perseverance NASA

The big news from Mars this week is the preparations for the first flight of the Ingenuity helicopter, but while that’s going ahead, the Perseverance rover has been keeping itself busy by investigating rocks on the Martian surface near to its location. And the rover has found something strange: A weird green rock that has scientists puzzled.

The image, shown above, was shared on the official Perseverance rover Twitter account, with the team writing that the odd finding has them trading hypotheses. The rock is around 6 inches long and has both an unusual green color and shiny spots of unknown origin.

Recommended Videos

The Perseverance researchers are currently debating whether this rock comes from the area it was found in, or whether it might have been moved there from a different original location by an impact event of some kind. It could even have come from outside of Mars, such as a meteorite that came from elsewhere in the solar system and impacted Mars.

Related

“The team has formulated many different hypotheses about this one,” the Perseverance Twitter account shared. “Is it something weathered out of the local bedrock? Is it a piece of Mars plopped into the area from a far-flung impact event? Is it a meteorite? Or something else?”

The team has formulated many different hypotheses about this one — is it something weathered out of the local bedrock? Is it a piece of Mars plopped into the area from a far-flung impact event? Is it a meteorite? Or something else?

— NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) March 31, 2021

The rock has another nifty feature as well — you can see the line of marks created by the rover’s SuperCam instrument laser. The instrument is designed to perform a type of analysis called laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, in which a laser is fired at a target rock to turn a small amount of the rock into a plasma. The instrument can then detect the chemical composition of this plasma, which shows what the rock is composed of.

The laser used for this analysis is super powerful, able to heat its targets to 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit. And the instrument also includes a microphone, which records audio samples that are used to hear how far the laser is penetrating into a sample and can even give clues to the hardness of the rock.

The SuperCam instrument recently delivered its first science results, and now we’ll have to wait for it to discover more about this strange rock.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
See Ingenuity helicopter take to the air in video captured by Perseverance rover
NASA's Perseverance Mars rover captured this video of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter's 54th flight on Aug. 3, 2023. After performing a preflight "wiggle check" with its rotors, the helicopter takes off, hovers at an altitude of 16 feet (5 meters), and rotates to the left, before touching back down. The mission conducted the short pop-up flight to check Ingenuity's navigation system.

NASA has released a video taken by the Perseverance rover on Mars that shows its companion, the helicopter Ingenuity, in flight. Ingenuity performed a short flight into the air and back down to the martian surface on August 3, and the rover was near enough to capture footage of the flight using its Mastcam-Z imager.

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover captured this video of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter's 54th flight on August 3, 2023. After performing a preflight "wiggle check" with its rotors, the helicopter takes off, hovers at an altitude of 16 feet (5 meters), and rotates to the left, before touching back down. The mission conducted the short pop-up flight to check Ingenuity's navigation system. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

Read more
Mars is spinning faster every year and no one knows exactly why
This annotated artist’s concept of NASA’s InSight lander on Mars points out the antennas on the spacecraft’s deck.

We're constantly learning more about the other planets in our solar system, especially Mars thanks to the multiple missions currently active there. But even retired missions can provide data for years after they have concluded, as is the case with a recent study that used data from the InSight lander.

The mission officially ended in December 2022 when the lander's solar panels became too covered in dust to provide enough power to keep it running. But recent analysis of data collected by the lander has revealed some surprises about Mars, including the fact that the planet is rotating faster every year.

Read more
NASA’s Mars helicopter glimpses Perseverance rover from the sky
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter.

NASA’s Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity, captured an aerial image of the Perseverance rover during its latest flight at the end of last week.

The aircraft and rover arrived together on the red planet in February 2021, and since then both have been operating inside the Jezero Crater, a dried-up lake that scientists believe could contain evidence of ancient life.

Read more