NASA’s new rover will collect martian rocks—and clues to planet’s ancient climate

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https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/nasa-s-new-rover-will-collect-martian-rocks-and-clues-planet-s-ancient-climate

Source: By Paul Voosen, Science Magazine. 

Excerpt: NASA’s newest Mars rover, Perseverance, is going back in time to the bottom of a vanished lake. If all goes well, in February 2021 it will land in Jezero crater and pop the dust covers off its camera lenses. Towering in front of it, in all likelihood, will be a 60-meter cliff of mudstone: the edge of a fossilized river delta. These lithified martian sediments could hold answers to urgent questions about the earliest days of Earth’s chilly, parched neighbor: How did this pintsize planet, so distant from a faint young Sun, support liquid water on its surface? How much water was there, and how long did it persist? And did Mars ever spawn life?.... See also Martian Chronicler, Science Magazine 2020 June 26 article by Paul Voosen [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6498/1416]

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