Aqueous alteration processes in Jezero crater, Mars—implications for organic geochemistry

Creators: Scheller, Eva L.; Razzell Hollis, Joseph; Cardarelli, Emily L.; Steele, Andrew; Beegle, Luther W.; Bhartia, Rohit; Conrad, Pamela; Uckert, Kyle; Sharma, Sunanda; Ehlmann, Bethany L.; Abbey, William J.; Asher, Sanford A.; Benison, Kathleen C.; Berger, Eve L.; Beyssac, Olivier; Bleefeld, Benjamin L.; Bosak, Tanja; Brown, Adrian J.; Burton, Aaron S.; Bykov, Sergei V.; Cloutis, Ed; Fairén, Alberto G.; DeFlores, Lauren; Farley, Kenneth A.; Fey, Deidra M.; Fornaro, Teresa; Fox, Allison C.; Fries, Marc; Hickman-Lewis, Keyron; Hug, William F.; Huggett, Joshua E.; Imbeah, Samara; Jakubek, Ryan S.; Kah, Linda C.; Kelemen, Peter; Kennedy, Megan R.; Kizovski, Tanya; Lee, Carina; Liu, Yang; Mandon, Lucia; McCubbin, Francis M.; Moore, Kelsey R.; Nixon, Brian E.; Núñez, Jorge I.; Rodriguez Sanchez-Vahamonde, Carolina; Roppel, Ryan D.; Schulte, Mitchell; Sephton, Mark A.; Sharma, Shiv K.; Siljeström, Sandra; Shkolyar, Svetlana; Shuster, David L.; Simon, Justin I.; Smith, Rebecca J.; Stack, Kathryn M.; Steadman, Kim; Weiss, Benjamin P.; Werynski, Alyssa; Williams, Amy J.; Wiens, Roger C.; Williford, Kenneth H.; Winchell, Kathrine; Wogsland, Brittan; Yanchilina, Anastasia; Yingling, Rachel; Zorzano, Maria-Paz

Abstract

The Perseverance rover landed in Jezero crater, Mars, in February 2021. We used the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument to perform deep-ultraviolet Raman and fluorescence spectroscopy of three rocks within the crater. We identify evidence for two distinct ancient aqueous environments at different times. Reactions with liquid water formed carbonates in an olivine-rich igneous rock. A sulfate-perchlorate mixture is present in the rocks, which probably formed by later modifications of the rocks by brine. Fluorescence signatures consistent with aromatic organic compounds occur throughout these rocks and are preserved in minerals related to both aqueous environments.

Additional Information

© 2022 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. We thank the entire Perseverance rover team. The work described in this paper was partially carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We thank K. Edgett for his contributions to the team and S. Le Mouélic for helpful comments. We thank V. Chevrier and two anonymous reviewers for their improvements to the manuscript. E.L.S. was supported by a NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship (NESSF) (grant 80NSSC18K1255). J.R.H. and A.C.F. were supported by a NASA Postdoctoral Program fellowship. E.L.S. J.R.H., A.S., L.W.B., R.B., B.L.E., P.G.C., M.F., F.M.M., and A.S.B. were supported by the NASA Mars 2020 Phase-E funds to the SHERLOC investigation. A.J.W. was supported by the NASA M2020 Participating Scientist Program. T.F. was supported by an Italian Space Agency grant (#2017-48-H.0). A.G.F was supported by the European Research Council Consolidator Grant (#818602). R.W. was funded by NASA contracts NNH15AZ25I and NNH13ZDA018O. S.S. was supported by the Swedish National Space Agency (contracts 137/19 and 2021-00092). K. H.-L. is funded by an Aurora Research Fellowship from the UK Space Agency (grant ST/V00560X/1). Author contributions: E.L.S. and J.R.H. contributed equally to data analysis. E.L.S. and J.R.H. wrote the manuscript with substantial contributions from A.S. and E.C. L.W.B. and R.B. are the principal and deputy investigators of the SHERLOC instrument. K.U. developed the Loupe software. P.C., S.Sha., B.L.E., W.J.A., S.A.A., E.L.B., B.L.B., A.S.B., S.V.B., L.D., D.M.F., T.F., A.C.F., M.F., K.H.-L., W.F.H., J.E.H., S.I., R.S.J., M.R.K., C.L., F.M.M., B.E.N., C.R.S.-V., R.D.R., S.Si., S.Shk., K.S., A.W., K.H.W., K.W., B.W., A.Y., and R.Y. are members of the SHERLOC science and operations teams, who participated in planning and carrying out SHERLOC data acquisitions, calibration, and processing during rover operations. The SHERLOC science team also provided laboratory measurements and data analysis and contributed to the writing of the initial manuscript. T.K., K.R.M., and Y.L. are members of the PIXL team, who assisted in paired SHERLOC and PIXL data analysis. K.C.B., O.B., T.B., A.J.B., E.L.C., A.G.F., K.A.F., L.C.K., P.K., L.M., J.I.N., M.S., M.A.S., S.K.S., D.L.S., J.I.S., R.J.S., K.M.S., B.P.W., A.J.W., R.C.W., and M.P.-Z. are members of the wider Perseverance rover science team; they contributed to planning the SHERLOC data acquisitions, participated in data interpretation, and/or assisted in revising the manuscript. Data and materials availability: The data are available on the Planetary Data System, in the bundles for SHERLOC and WATSON (31), Mastcam-Z (32), Navcam and Hazcam (33), PIXL (34), and Supercam (35); the exact files we used are listed in the supplementary materials. The Loupe software is archived at Zenodo (36). Laboratory data used for the study are archived at Zenodo (37). We declare no competing interests.

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, 378(6624), 1105-1110, ISSN: 0036-8075.