On Mars, Nasa’s Perseverance Takes A Shortcut, Stumbles Upon A Strange-Looking Boulder

US space agency Nasa said its Perseverance rover made a strange discovery while exploring an ancient crater. The rover, which landed on the Red Planet in 2021 to probe the Jezero crater in Mars, found a mysterious light-toned boulder. The space agency said that the boulder was the first of its kind seen on Martian land.

The boulder was spotted when Perseverance was traversing the Neretva Vallis, a dried river delta that flowed into the crater billions of years ago. Nasa said that their rover was on its way to the area inside the rim. A crater rim is the edge of the crater typically elevated above the original ground surface.

Perseverance was examining rocky outcrops for sediment as scientists look to these for shedding more light on Mars’ history. The rover changed its route to avoid rough terrain. While taking a shortcut through a dune field, it reached a hill that scientists have named Mount Washburn.

Nasa said that the hill was covered with such boulders and described them as a “type never observed before on Mars’.

While some of the boulders were darker, one small boulder, a light-toned one, piqued the interest of the scientist working with Perseverance from Earth. It measured roughly 18 inches across and 14 inches tall.

The light-toned rock stood out among a field of dark boulders.

“The diversity of textures and compositions at Mount Washburn was an exciting discovery for the team, as these rocks represent a grab bag of geologic gifts brought down from the crater rim and potentially beyond. But among all these different rocks, there was one that really caught our attention,” Brad Garczynski of Western Washington University, who co-leads the current Perseverance mission, said in a statement.

Garczynski and his team nicknamed the mysterious boulder Atoko Point. Perseverance then ran a set of tests on the rock using its tools and suggested it was composed of the minerals pyroxene and feldspar.

NASA stated that the size, shape, and overall arrangement of minerals at Atoko Point, as well as the potential chemical composition of the boulder, make the rock “in a league of its own” compared to other Martian sediments known to scientists.

According to the US Geological Survey and Nasa, pyroxene and feldspar are minerals found in the Earth’s crust and on the moon. Nasa said that some scientists on the Perseverance team think the minerals at Atoko Point might have come from magma below Mars’ surface, later exposed at the Jezero crater rim due to erosion.

Other team members suggested the boulder might seem out of place on Washburn Hill and if it was formed elsewhere on Mars and moved to its current location by an ancient river.

The space agency said all Perseverance scientists agree that similar rocks must exist elsewhere on Mars.