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

Creators: 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.

Abstract

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.

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Resource type: Journal Article
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science
Published in: Science, 377(6614), Art. No. eabo2196, ISSN: 0036-8075.