NASA’s Mars Perseverance “Kodiak” Moment – Jezero Crater’s Lake Is More Complicated and Intriguing Than Thought

Jezero Crater's Scarp A

The escarpment the science team refers to as “Scarp a” is seen in this image captured by Perseverance rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument on April 17, 2021. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

Pictures from NASA’s latest six-wheeler on the Red Planet suggest the area’s history experienced significant flooding events.

A new paper from the science team of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover details how the hydrological cycle of the now-dry lake at Jezero Crater is more complicated and intriguing than originally thought. The findings are based on detailed imaging the rover provided of long, steep slopes called escarpments, or scarps in the delta, which formed from sediment accumulating at the mouth of an ancient river that long ago fed the crater’s lake.

The images reveal that billions of years ago, when Mars had an atmosphere thick enough to support water flowing across its surface, Jezero’s fan-shaped river delta experienced late-stage flooding events that carried rocks and debris into it from the highlands well outside the crater.

Mars Jezero Crater Delta Scarp

 This image of an escarpment, or scarp – a long, steep slope – along the delta of Mars’ Jezero Crater was generated using data from the Perseverance rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument. The inset image at top is a close-up provided by the Remote Microscopic Imager, which is part of the SuperCam instrument. Credit: RMI: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/CNRS/ASU/MSSS

Taken by the rover’s left and right Mastcam-Z cameras as well as its Remote Micro-Imager, or RMI (part of the SuperCam instrument), they also provide insight into where the rover could best hunt for rock and sediment samples, including those that may contain organic compounds and other evidence that life once existed there.

The rover team has long planned to visit the delta because of its potential for harboring signs of ancient microbial life. One of the mission’s primary goals is to collect samples that could be brought to Earth by the multi-mission Mars Sample Return effort, enabling scientists to analyze the material with powerful lab equipment too large to bring to Mars.

Perseverance Rover, Scarp, and Kodiak Locations

This annotated image indicates the locations of NASA’s Perseverance rover (lower right), as well as the “Kodiak” butte (lower left) and several prominent steep banks known as escarpments, or scarps, along the delta of Jezero Crater. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/USGS

The paper on Perseverance’s scarp imagery – the first research to be published with data acquired after the rover’s February 18 landing – was released online on October 7, 2021, in the journal Science.

“This is the key observation that enables us to once and for all confirm the presence of a lake and river delta at Jezero.”

Perseverance’s ‘Kodiak’ Moment

At the time the images were taken, the scarps were to the northwest of the rover and about 1.2 miles (2.2 kilometers) away. Southwest of the rover, and at about the same distance, lies another prominent rock outcrop the team calls “Kodiak.” In its ancient past, Kodiak was at the southern edge of the delta, which would have been an intact geologic structure at the time.

Mastcam Z Spots Remnant of a Fan Shaped Deposit of Sediments

This image of “Kodiak” – one remnant of the fan-shaped deposit of sediments inside Mars’ Jezero Crater known as the delta – was taken by Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z instrument on February 22, 2021. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Prior to Perseverance’s arrival, Kodiak had been imaged only from orbit. From the surface, the rover’s Mastcam-Z and RMI images revealed for the first time the stratigraphy – the order and position of rock layers, which provides information about the relative timing of geological deposits – along Kodiak’s eastern face. The inclined and horizontal layering there is what a geologist would expect to see in a river delta on Earth.

“Never before has such well-preserved stratigraphy been visible on Mars,” said Nicolas Mangold, a Perseverance scientist from the Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géodynamique in Nantes, France, and lead author of the paper. “This is the key observation that enables us to once and for all confirm the presence of a lake and river delta at Jezero. Getting a better understanding of the hydrology months in advance of our arrival at the delta is going to pay big dividends down the road.”

While the Kodiak results are significant, it is the tale told by the images of the scarps to the northeast that came as the greatest surprise to the rover science team.

Moving Boulders

Imagery of those scarps showed layering similar to Kodiak’s on their lower halves. But farther up each of their steep walls and on top, Mastcam-Z and RMI captured stones and boulders.

“We saw distinct layers in the scarps containing boulders up to 5 feet [1.5 meters] across that we knew had no business being there,” said Mangold.

Jezero Crater’s River Delta Mosaics

The top mosaic of Jezero Crater’s river delta was stitched together from multiple images taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover on April 17, 2021. The bottom annotated image highlights the location of four prominent long, steep slopes known as escarpments, or scarps. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

Those layers mean the slow, meandering waterway that fed the delta must have been transformed by later, fast-moving flash floods. Mangold and the science team estimate that a torrent of water needed to transport the boulders – some for tens of miles – would have to travel at speeds ranging from 4 to 20 mph (6 to 30 kph).

“These results also have an impact on the strategy for the selection of rocks for sampling,” said Sanjeev Gupta, a Perseverance scientist from Imperial College, London, and a co-author of the paper. “The finest-grained material at the bottom of the delta probably contains our best bet for finding evidence of organics and biosignatures. And the boulders at the top will enable us to sample old pieces of crustal rocks. Both are main objectives for sampling and caching rocks before Mars Sample Return.”

A Lake of Changing Depths

Early in the history of the Jezero Crater’s former lake, its levels are thought to have been high enough to crest the crater’s eastern rim, where orbital imagery shows the remains of an outflow river channel. The new paper adds to this thinking, describing the size of Jezero’s lake fluctuating greatly over time, its water level rising and falling by tens of yards before the body of water eventually disappeared altogether.

While it’s unknown if these swings in the water level resulted from flooding or more gradual environmental changes, the science team has determined that they occurred later in the Jezero delta’s history, when lake levels were at least 330 feet (100 meters) below the lake’s highest level. And the team is looking forward to making more insights in the future: The delta will be the starting point for the rover team’s upcoming second science campaign next year.

“A better understanding of Jezero’s delta is a key to understanding the change in hydrology for the area,” said Gupta, “and it could potentially provide valuable insights into why the entire planet dried out.”

Reference: “Perseverance rover reveals an ancient delta-lake system and flood deposits at Jezero crater, Mars” by N. Mangold, S. Gupta, O. Gasnault, G. Dromart, J. D. Tarnas, S. F. Sholes, B. Horgan, C. Quantin-Nataf, A. J. Brown, S. Le Mouélic, R. A. Yingst, J. F. Bell, O. Beyssac, T. Bosak, F. Calef III, B. L. Ehlmann, K. A. Farley, J. P. Grotzinger, K. Hickman-Lewis, S. Holm-Alwmark, L. C. Kah, J. Martinez-Frias, S. M. McLennan, S. Maurice, J. I. Nuñez, A. M. Ollila, P. Pilleri, J.W. Rice Jr., M. Rice, J. I. Simon, D. L. Shuster, K. M. Stack, V. Z. Sun, A. H. Treiman, B. P. Weiss, R. C. Wiens, A. J. Williams, N. R. Williams and K. H. Williford, 7 October 2021, Science.
DOI: 10.1126/science.abl4051

More About Perseverance

A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

5 Comments on "NASA’s Mars Perseverance “Kodiak” Moment – Jezero Crater’s Lake Is More Complicated and Intriguing Than Thought"

  1. Love the story, but you mean ‘Kodak* Moment,’ unless you’re talking about pictures of large brown bears [Ursus horibilis] or the largest island in the Kodiak Archipelago. That said, I’d love to see Perseverance snag a salmon from a rushing Martian stream. Very nice article otherwise.

    * Like the old camera company.

  2. If this location is actually an ancient non-marine lake, It should be chemically distinct from other locales where the ancient martian ocean deposits are located…those already studied by other rovers. The evaporation of that lake water should have left chemical and mineralogical signatures consistent with non-marine waters. They should be different from what “normal” marine “sea water” would leave when Mars dried up. Hopefully, the rover will stop taking landscape photos and do the chemical work it was designed for to answer some of these questions. Marine evaporation leaves chlorides. Are there any on Mars?

  3. If this location is actually a non-marine lake deposit when it evaporated it should have left behind chemical and mineralogical signatures that would be different from those left by the martian ocean at other locales visited by earlier rovers. Those should include chlorides. So far none has been found. The Pererverance rover can help address that problem by analyzing the lake-bed evaporites.

  4. Sorry for the duplication. The first one didn’t go through for some reason. I got a “spam” message?

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