the Six-wheeled robot It landed in the red planet's crater called Jezero in 2021, and has provided space research with a lot of useful data since then. The rover's main mission is to search for traces of once-existing Martian life, which it carries out using several instruments. He collected his latest data with a device called RIMFAX, a radar that penetrates beneath the surface. This reveals the secrets of strata at a depth of twenty metres. The study of the data was conducted jointly by research groups from two institutions, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Oslo.
According to their latest study, Mars may have once been home to a huge body of water in the region. The results confirmed what previous studies had indicated, that Mars is now cold and dry, but it was previously a warm and humid place, with water suitable for microscopic life.
Scientists hope to be able to examine the sediments collected by the Perseverance rover when these samples are returned to Earth. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) hope to send another rover to the red planet by the end of the decade in a multibillion-dollar mission that will continue to collect valuable samples.
source: BBC
Image source(s): NASA/JPL-Caltech/FFI
