NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover captured this image of a black-and-white striped rock using its Left Mastcam-Z camera. Mastcam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rover’s mast. This image was acquired on Sept. 13, 2024 (Sol 1268) at the local mean solar time of 12:40:29. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover uncovered something amazing on the Red Planet. It found a zebra. Well, a zebra-striped rock at least.
Last week, the team and the public were astonished when Perseverance discovered a unique black-and-white striped rock on Mars. This intriguing find hints at even more exciting discoveries ahead.
Nearly a month has passed since the rover began its ascent towards the crater rim, searching for ancient rocks that could reveal Mars’ early history. Although the initial climb was challenging, Perseverance’s progress has significantly improved as it navigates a flatter terrain. From its current vantage point, the rover can now see familiar landmarks like the iconic “Kodiak” butte, obscured by dust from nearby storms.
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While driving across unremarkable pebbly terrain, Perseverance team members spotted a cobble in the distance with hints of an unusual texture in low resolution Navcam images, and gave it the name Freya Castle. The team planned a multispectral observation using the Mastcam-Z camera in order to get a closer look before driving away. When these data were downlinked a couple days later, after Perseverance had already left the area, it became clear just how unusual it was.
Freya Castle is around 20 cm across, and has a striking pattern with alternating black and white stripes.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover searches for signs of ancient microbial life, to advance NASA’s quest to explore the past habitability of Mars. The rover is collecting core samples of Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and soil), for potential pickup by a future mission that would bring them to Earth for detailed study.
NASA’s science team thinks that this rock has a texture unlike any seen in Jezero Crater before, and perhaps all of Mars.
“Our knowledge of its chemical composition is limited, but early interpretations are that igneous and/or metamorphic processes could have created its stripes,” they said. “Since Freya Castle is a loose stone that is clearly different from the underlying bedrock, it has likely arrived here from someplace else, perhaps having rolled downhill from a source higher up. This possibility has us excited, and we hope that as we continue to drive uphill, Perseverance will encounter an outcrop of this new rock type so that more detailed measurements can be acquired.”
NASA said that Freya Castle is merely the latest in a series of intriguing rocks found recently on Mars. Ever since arriving in the vicinity of the crater rim, the team has noticed an increased variety of rocks, such as the diverse collection of boulders at Mount Washburn.
