Perseverance rover reveals an ancient delta-lake system and flood deposits at Jezero crater, Mars

Creators: Mangold, N.; Gupta, S.; Gasnault, O.; Dromart, G.; Tarnas, J. D.; Sholes, S. F.; Horgan, B.; Quantin-Nataf, C.; Brown, A. J.; Le Mouélic, S.; Yingst, R. A.; Bell, J. F.; Beyssac, O.; Bosak, T.; Calef, F., III; Ehlmann, B. L.; Farley, K. A.; Grotzinger, J. P.; Hickman-Lewis, K.; Holm-Alwmark, S.; Kah, L. C.; Martínez-Frías, J.; McLennan, S. M.; Maurice, S.; Nuñez, J. I.; Ollila, A. M.; Pilleri, P.; Rice, J. W., Jr.; Rice, M.; Simon, J. I.; Shuster, D. L.; Stack, K. M.; Sun, V. Z.; Treiman, A. H.; Weiss, B. P.; Wiens, R. C.; Williams, A. J.; Williams, N. R.; Williford, K. H.

Abstract

Observations from orbital spacecraft have shown that Jezero crater on Mars contains a prominent fan-shaped body of sedimentary rock deposited at its western margin. The Perseverance rover landed in Jezero crater in February 2021. We analyze images taken by the rover in the 3 months after landing. The fan has outcrop faces, which were invisible from orbit, that record the hydrological evolution of Jezero crater. We interpret the presence of inclined strata in these outcrops as evidence of deltas that advanced into a lake. In contrast, the uppermost fan strata are composed of boulder conglomerates, which imply deposition by episodic high-energy floods. This sedimentary succession indicates a transition from sustained hydrologic activity in a persistent lake environment to highly energetic short-duration fluvial flows.

Additional Information

© 2021 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Received 12 July 2021; accepted 21 September 2021. Published online 7 October 2021. We acknowledge the Mars 2020 project's management, engineering, and scientific teams for their diligent efforts in making this mission as effective as possible. We are grateful to Mars 2020 team members who participated in tactical and strategic science operations. We also thank the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) and CRISM instrument teams of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) for the use of HiRISE images, and the Observatoire pour la Minéralogie, l'Eau, les Glaces et l'Activité (OMEGA) instrument team of the Mars Express mission for the use of OMEGA data. N.M., O.G., G.D., C.Q.-N., S.L.M., P.P., and S.M. acknowledge the Centre National de Recherches Scientifiques (CNRS) and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) for the research infrastructures and collaborative networks enabling their participation to rover operations. The authors appreciated helpful suggestions from reviewers. Funding: Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, France (N.M., O.G., G.D., C.Q.-N., S.L.M., P.P., S.M.); NASA Mars 2020 Project (J.D.T., S.F.S., B.H., J.F.B., K.A.F., K.H.W., K.M.S., R.C.W., B.L.E., S.M.M., R.A.Y., J.I.N.); NASA Planetary Science Division, Mars Program (J.I.S.); NASA M2020 Participating Scientist Program under Grant #80NSSC21K0332 (A.J.W.); NASA Mars 2020 Returned Sample Science Participating Scientist Program (RSSPS) award numbers 80NSSC20K0234 (T.B.) and 80NSSC20K0238 (B.P.W.); NASA Post-Doctoral program (JDT); UK Space Agency Aurora program (S.G.); UK Space Agency Aurora Research Fellowship (K.H.-L.); International Postdoc grant from the Swedish Research Council (grant no. 2017-06388) (S.H.-A.); Simons Foundation Collaboration on the Origins of Life, grant #327126 (T.B.). Author contributions: Conceptualization: N.M., S.G., and G.D. Methodology – data processing: O.G., P.P., S.L.M., J.F.B., J.I.N., M.R., A.M.O., B.H., C.Q.-N., J.D.T., R.A.Y., and L.C.K. Project administration: J.F.B., K.A.F., K.H.W., K.M.S., R.C.W., and S.M. Writing – original draft: N.M., S.G., G.D., A.J.B., B.H., B.W., J.F.B., O.G., and D.L.S. Writing – review & editing: N.M., S.G., O.G., G.D., J.D.T., S.F.S., B.H., R.A.Y., J.F.B., O.B., T.B., B.E., K.A.F., J.P.G., K.H.-L., S.H.-A., L.C.K., J.M.-F., S.M.L., J.I.N., J.W.R., M.R., J.I.S., D.L.S., K.M.S., V.Z.S., A.H.T., B.P.W., R.C.W., A.J.W., and K.H.W. Visualization: N.M., G.D., S.L.M., C.Q.-N., B.H., J.D.T., M.R., J.F.B., S.F.S., F.C., and N.R.W. The authors declare no competing interests. Data and materials availability: The data used in this paper are available on the Planetary Data System (PDS). Tables S1 and S2 give links to PDS web pages for the Perseverance rover SuperCam and Mastcam-Z instruments and list the image numbers used in Figs. 1 to 4 and figs. S2 to S4, S6, S7, and S12. Data from the OMEGA instrument on Mars Express, used in fig. S11, are available at https://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/mex/mex-m-omega-2-edr-flight-v1/mexomg-0001/data/ in the "gem04" and "gem22" directories. Data from the HiRISE instrument on MRO, used in Fig. 1 and figs. S1 and S9 to S11, are available at https://hirise-pds.lpl.arizona.edu/PDS/EDR/ESP/ORB_036600_036699/ESP_036618_1985/, https://hirise-pds.lpl.arizona.edu/PDS/EDR/ESP/ORB_037100_037199/ESP_037119_1985/, https://hirise-pds.lpl.arizona.edu/PDS/EDR/PSP/ORB_002300_002399/PSP_002387_1985/, and https://hirise-pds.lpl.arizona.edu/PDS/EDR/PSP/ORB_003700_003799/PSP_003798_1985/. The CRISM data used for fig. S11 are available at https://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/mro/mro-m-crism-3-rdr-targeted-v1/mrocr_2101/trdr/2007/2007_029/hrl000040ff/hrl000040ff_07_if183l_trr3.img. The Context Camera image mosaic of Jezero used in Fig. 5 and fig. S1 is available at the United States Geological Survey https://astrogeology.usgs.gov/search/map/Mars/Mars2020/JEZ_ctx_B_soc_008_orthoMosaic_6m_Eqc_latTs0_lon0. The Entry, Descent, Landing (EDL) image used in fig. S5 is available at https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/. Our cobble size measurements, used to produce Fig. 3E and fig. S7, are provided in data S1.

Attached Files

Supplemental Material - science.abl4051_data_s1.zip

Supplemental Material - science.abl4051_sm.pdf

Files

science.abl4051_data_s1.zip

Files (6.9 MB)

Name	Size	Download all
science.abl4051_data_s1.zip md5:11444eb724bcc8e2004b41c798d4994b	74.7 kB	Preview Download
science.abl4051_sm.pdf md5:92b255fe78b755ed122c859c13ea5080	6.8 MB	Preview Download

Additional details

Views

Downloads

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

More info on how stats are collected....

Resource type: Journal Article
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science
Published in: Science, 374(6568), 711-717, ISSN: 0036-8075.