Aqueously altered igneous rocks sampled on the floor of Jezero crater, Mars

Farley, K. A.; Stack, K. M.; Shuster, D. L.; Horgan, B. H. N.; Hurowitz, J. A.; Tarnas, J. D.; Simon, J. I.; Sun, V. Z.; Scheller, E. L.; Moore, K. R.; McLennan, S. M.; Vasconcelos, P. M.; Wiens, R. C.; Treiman, A. H.; Mayhew, L. E.; Beyssac, O.; Kizovski, T. V.; Tosca, N. J.; Williford, K. H.; Crumpler, L. S.; Beegle, L. W.; Bell, J. F.; Ehlmann, B. L.; Liu, Y.; Maki, J. N.; Schmidt, M. E.; Allwood, A. C.; Amundsen, H. E. F.; Bhartia, R.; Bosak, T.; Brown, A. J.; Clark, B. C.; Cousin, A.; Forni, O.; Gabriel, T. S. J.; Goreva, Y.; Gupta, S.; Hamran, S.-E.; Herd, C. D. K.; Hickman-Lewis, K.; Johnson, J. R.; Kah, L. C.; Kelemen, P. B.; Kinch, K. B.; Mandon, L.; Mangold, N.; Quantin-Nataf, C.; Rice, M. S.; Russell, P. S.; Sharma, S.; Siljeström, S.; Steele, A.; Sullivan, R.; Wadhwa, M.; Weiss, B. P.; Williams, A. J.; Wogsland, B. V.; Willis, P. A.; Acosta-Maeda, T. A.; Beck, P.; Benzerara, K.; Bernard, S.; Burton, A. S.; Cardarelli, E. L.; Chide, B.; Clavé, E.; Cloutis, E. A.; Cohen, B. A.; Czaja, A. D.; Debaille, V.; Dehouck, E.; Fairén, A. G.; Flannery, D. T.; Fleron, S. Z.; Fouchet, T.; Frydenvang, J.; Garczynski, B. J.; Gibbons, E. F.; Hausrath, E. M.; Hayes, A. G.; Henneke, J.; Jørgensen, J. L.; Kelly, E. M.; Lasue, J.; Le Mouélic, S.; Madariaga, J. M.; Maurice, S.; Merusi, M.; Meslin, P.-Y.; Milkovich, S. M.; Million, C. C.; Moeller, R. C.; Núñez, J. I.; Ollila, A. M.; Paar, G.; Paige, D. A.; Pedersen, D. A. K.; Pilleri, P.; Pilorget, C.; Pinet, P. C.; Rice, J. W.; Royer, C.; Sautter, V.; Schulte, M.; Sephton, M. A.; Sharma, S. K.; Sholes, S. F.; Spanovich, N.; St. Clair, M.; Tate, C. D.; Uckert, K.; VanBommel, S. J.; Yanchilina, A. G.; Zorzano, M.-P.

doi:10.1126/science.abo2196

Published September 30, 2022 | Version public

Journal Article Metadata-only

Aqueously altered igneous rocks sampled on the floor of Jezero crater, Mars

1. California Institute of Technology
2. Jet Propulsion Lab
3. University of California, Berkeley
4. Purdue University West Lafayette
5. Stony Brook University
6. Johnson Space Center
7. University of Queensland
8. Los Alamos National Laboratory
9. Lunar and Planetary Institute
10. University of Colorado Boulder
11. Sorbonne University
12. Brock University
13. University of Cambridge
14. Blue Marble Space Institute of Science
15. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science
16. Arizona State University
17. University of Oslo
18. Photon Systems (United States)
19. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
20. Space Science Institute
21. Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology
22. Astrogeology Science Center
23. Imperial College London
24. University of Alberta
25. Natural History Museum
26. University of Bologna
27. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
28. University of Tennessee at Knoxville
29. Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
30. University of Copenhagen
31. Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géodynamique de Nantes
32. Claude Bernard University Lyon 1
33. Western Washington University
34. University of California, Los Angeles
35. Cornell University
36. University of Florida
37. University of Hawaii at Manoa
38. University of Bordeaux
39. University of Winnipeg
40. Goddard Space Flight Center
41. University of Cincinnati
42. Université Libre de Bruxelles
43. Centro de Astrobiología
44. Queensland University of Technology
45. McGill University
46. Technical University of Denmark
47. University of the Basque Country
48. Joanneum Research
49. Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale
50. Institut Universitaire de France
51. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
52. Washington University in St. Louis

The Perseverance rover landed in Jezero crater, Mars, to investigate ancient lake and river deposits. We report observations of the crater floor, below the crater's sedimentary delta, finding that the floor consists of igneous rocks altered by water. The lowest exposed unit, informally named Séítah, is a coarsely crystalline olivine-rich rock, which accumulated at the base of a magma body. Magnesium-iron carbonates along grain boundaries indicate reactions with carbon dioxide–rich water under water-poor conditions. Overlying Séítah is a unit informally named Máaz, which we interpret as lava flows or the chemical complement to Séítah in a layered igneous body. Voids in these rocks contain sulfates and perchlorates, likely introduced by later near-surface brine evaporation. Core samples of these rocks have been stored aboard Perseverance for potential return to Earth.

Additional Information

Funding: This effort was carried out in part at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004). K.A.F., K.M.S., J.D.T., V.Z.S., Y.L., J.N.M., A.C.A., Y.G., P.A.W., E.L.C., S.M.Mi., R.C.M., S.F.S., N.S., and K.U. were supported by NASA grant 80NM0018D0004 through JPL. D.T.F. was supported by Australian Research Council grant DE210100205. E.F.G. was supported by Canadian Space Agency grant 21EXPCOI1. E.A.C. was supported by Canadian Space Agency grant 19PACOI0 and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada grant RGPIN-2021-02995. C.D.K.H., T.V.K., and M.E.S. were supported by Canadian Space Agency M2020 Participating Scientist grants. M.M. was supported by the EU's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska Curie grant 801199. G.P. was supported by ESA PRODEX Experiment Arrangement PEA 4000117520. V.D. was supported by Fonds pour la Recherche Scientifique. A.J.W., S.J.V., D.L.S., J.I.S., L.E.M., T.B., and E.M.H. were supported by NASA Mars 2020 Participating Scientist grants. T.B. was supported by the Simons Foundation Collaboration on the Origins of Life grant 327126. R.C.W. was supported by NASA Mars 2020 contracts NNH15AZ24I and NNH13ZDA018O for SuperCam and a LANL internal LDRD grant. S.K.S. was supported by JPL subcontract 1654163. S.G. was supported by the Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship (SRF\R1\21000106) and the UK Space Agency Aurora program. M.-P.Z. was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under grant PID2019-104205GB-C21. S.Si. was supported by the Swedish National Space Agency under contracts 137/19 and 2021-00092. K.B.K. was supported by the Carlsberg Foundation, grant CF19-0023. S.-E.H. was supported by the Research Council of Norway under grants 301238 and 309835. The work of O.B., A.C., O.F., L.M., N.M., C.Q.-N., P.B., K.B., B.C., E.C., E.D., T.F., J.L., S.L.M., S.M., P.-Y.M., P.P., C.P., P.C.P., C.R., and V.S. on Mars 2020 was supported by CNES. K.H.-L. was supported by a UK Space Agency Aurora Research Fellowship. M.A.S. was supported by UK Space Agency grants ST/V002732/1 and ST/V006134/1. J.F.B. was supported by NASA-JPL subcontract number 1511125. A.G.F. was supported by the European Research Council, Consolidator Grant 818602.

Additional details

Eprint ID: 118293
Resolver ID: CaltechAUTHORS:20221212-615014000.1

NASA/JPL/Caltech
80NM0018D0004
Australian Research Council
DE210100205
Canadian Space Agency (CSA)
21EXPCOI1
Canadian Space Agency (CSA)
19PACOI0
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
RGPIN-2021-02995
Marie Curie Fellowship
801199
European Space Agency (ESA)
PEA 4000117520
Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS)
Simons Foundation
327126
NASA
NNH15AZ24I
NASA
NNH13ZDA018O
Los Alamos National Laboratory
JPL
1654163
Royal Society
SRF\R1\21000106
Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MCINN)
PID2019-104205GB-C21
Swedish National Space Agency
137/19
Swedish National Space Agency
2021-00092
Carlsberg Foundation
CF19-0023
Research Council of Norway
301238
Research Council of Norway
309835
Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES)
United Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA)
ST/V002732/1
United Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA)
ST/V006134/1
JPL
1511125
European Research Council (ERC)
818602

Created: 2022-12-13

Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated: 2022-12-13

Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech groups: Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)

	All versions	This version
Views	272	272
Downloads	0	0
Data volume	0 Bytes	0 Bytes

Aqueously altered igneous rocks sampled on the floor of Jezero crater, Mars

Additional Information

Additional details

Identifiers

Funding

Dates

Caltech Custom Metadata

Aqueously altered igneous rocks sampled on the floor of Jezero crater, Mars

Creators

Abstract

Additional Information

Additional details

Identifiers

Funding

Dates

Caltech Custom Metadata