The Perseverance Mars rover has collected a rock sample on Mars unlike any other it has picked up so far.
NASA’s Perseverance rover is currently exploring hills and rocky outcrops along the rim of Jezero Crater, where it has been collecting rock samples to reveal the area’s geological history. This week, NASA announced that the robotic explorer picked up a “one-of-a-kind treasure” in the form of a 1.1-inch (2.9-centimeter) rock sample from an area known as “Silver Mountain.”
“My 26th sample, known as ‘Silver Mountain,’ has textures unlike anything we’ve seen before,” the rover’s official X account posted along with a photo of the sample.
The rocks in this area are of immense scientific interest as they could offer a “rare window into Mars’ deep past,” NASA wrote in the statement.
The rocks in Perseverance’s current area are believed to have been thrust up to the Red Planet surface from deep inside the planet after an ancient impact billions of years ago.
These rocks are believed to be pieces of the early Martian crust, and could be “among the oldest rocks found anywhere in the solar system,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrote in a statement. Studying them could help us understand what Mars and even Earth were like early in our solar system’s formation.
NASA says this is the first sample from the Noachian age, a period of Mars’ geological history around 4 billion years ago marked by frequent asteroid and comet impacts that shaped many of the craters will still see on the Red Planet today.
Perseverance landed on Mars in 2021 near Jezero Crater with several objectives in mind: scour the area for possible signs of ancient life, collect rock samples like “Silver Mountain” for an eventual return to Earth for study, and to test new exploration technologies.
One of those technologies was the plucky Ingenuity helicopter, a robotic flyer that was designed to make five test flights. It ended up taking to the Red Planet skies a total of 72 times before it suffered rotor damage, ending its mission.
Over the course of its four years on Mars, Perseverance has discovered rocks that show possible chemical evidence of having interacted with water at some point in their geological history. Water, at least on Earth, is essential for life.
While scientists are eager to return this and other samples to Earth so that they can be studied in-depth, the fate of the Mars Sample Return program is still unknown due to rising costs and mission complexity.
After cost projections rose to $11 billion and the sample return timeline was extended to no earlier than 2040, NASA began overhauling the plan entirely and has since sought new proposals from industry and academia. The agency will decide on a new strategy in 2026.
China, meanwhile, is aiming to launch its own Mars sample return mission in 2028, which would potentially have samples back on Earth by 2031.
