If you’re stuck in a situation when the Mars subject is brought into discussion, it’s a good idea to break the ice by mentioning the colonization hypothesis. Most people like the idea of terraforming the Red Planet someday, although nobody knows exactly how to do it, not even the all-knowing Elon Musk.
Exploring Mars remotely is an absolute ‘must’ in order to determine what exactly could await astronauts when and if they will ever land there. NASA’s Perseverance rover has been exploring the Martian environment since early 2021.
Perseverance finds evidence of a Martian river that was deeper and faster-moving than they’d expected
Fox News reveals that the Perseverance rover of NASA has released new images of the Martian surface that indicate the possible existence of a wild river in the planet’s distant past.
Question: When you see something like this, do you say, “Huh, a pile of rocks.” – or something more like, “Whoa! Crazy tall, tilted, sedimentary layers! Formed by a fast-moving ancient river, maybe?”
(I think you know where I stand.)
Latest findings: https://t.co/vU8O1gpLmP pic.twitter.com/zZjmWimVge
— NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) May 11, 2023
Coarse sediment grains and cobbles were found due to the images collected by the rover. Surely astronomers cannot call it a day after only analyzing superficially the data they’ve got.
Libby Ives, who works at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA as a postdoctoral researcher, explained as Fox News quotes:
Those indicate a high-energy river that’s truckin’ and carrying a lot of debris. The more powerful the flow of water, the more easily it’s able to move larger pieces of material.
NASA explained via its official website:
New images taken by NASA’s Perseverance rover may show signs of what was once a rollicking river on Mars, one that was deeper and faster-moving than scientists have ever seen evidence for in the past. The river was part of a network of waterways that flowed into Jezero Crater, the area the rover has been exploring since landing more than two years ago.
Hopefully, no astronaut will bite the dust once he arrives on Mars at some point in the near future. It’s pretty difficult to say for sure at this point how the human body will react under Martian conditions. But the good news is that both NASA and SpaceX are looking for ways to make the Mars colonization a dream come true.
