{"id":34073,"date":"2025-09-23T23:30:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T23:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/34073\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T23:30:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T23:30:07","slug":"jezero-crater-experienced-multiple-episodes-of-fluid-activity-new-study-confirms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/34073\/","title":{"rendered":"Jezero Crater Experienced Multiple Episodes of Fluid Activity, New Study Confirms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Minerals are the building blocks of rocks, and the types of minerals and their chemistry provide critical information about rock formation and history. On Mars, NASA\u2019s Perseverance rover, equipped with the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL), generates geochemical maps of rock surfaces. In new research, scientists analyzed the results of over 90,000 chemical analyses performed by PIXL in the first 1,100 days on Mars and found that the minerals in Jezero crater have interacted with multiple, distinct types of fluids over time. The results<\/a> appear in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.<\/p>\n

\"This<\/p>\n

This image from NASA\u2019s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows Jezero Crater on Mars. Image credit: NASA \/ JPL-Caltech \/ MSSS \/ JHU-APL.<\/p>\n

In the study, Rice University graduate student Eleanor Moreland and her colleagues employed the Mineral Identification by Stoichiometry (MIST) algorithm to interpret the PIXL data.<\/p>\n

PIXL bombards Martian rocks with X-rays to reveal their chemical composition, offering the most detailed geochemical measurements ever collected on another planet, according to the study.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe minerals we find in Jezero crater using MIST support multiple, temporally distinct episodes of fluid alteration, which indicates there were several times in Mars\u2019 history when these particular volcanic rocks interacted with liquid water and therefore more than one time when this location hosted environments potentially suitable for life,\u201d Moreland said.<\/p>\n

Minerals form under specific environmental conditions of temperature, pH and the chemical makeup of fluids, making them reliable storytellers of planetary history.<\/p>\n

In Jezero crater, 24 mineral species reveal the volcanic nature of the Martian surface and its interactions with water over time.<\/p>\n

The water chemically weathers the rocks and creates salts or clay minerals, and the specific minerals that form depend on environmental conditions.<\/p>\n

The identified minerals in the crater reveal three types of fluid interactions, each with different implications for habitability.<\/p>\n

The first suite of minerals \u2014 including greenalite, hisingerite and ferroaluminoceladonite \u2014 indicate localized high-temperature acidic fluids that were only found in rocks on the crater floor, which are interpreted as some of the oldest rocks included in this study.<\/p>\n

The water involved in this episode is considered the least habitable for life, since research on Earth has shown high temperatures and low pH can damage biological structures.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese hot, acidic conditions would be the most challenging for life,\u201d said Rice University researcher Kirsten Siebach.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut on Earth, life can persist even in extreme environments like the acidic pools of water at Yellowstone, so it doesn\u2019t rule out habitability.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second suite of minerals reflects moderate, neutral fluids that support more favorable conditions for life and were present over a larger area.<\/p>\n

Minerals like minnesotaite and clinoptilolite formed at lower temperatures and neutral pH with minnesotaite detected in both the crater floor and the upper fan region, while clinoptilolite was restricted to the crater floor.<\/p>\n

Finally, the third category represents low-temperature, alkaline fluids and is considered quite habitable from our modern Earth perspective.<\/p>\n

Sepiolite, a common alteration mineral on Earth, formed under moderate temperatures and alkaline conditions and was found widely distributed across all units the rover has explored.<\/p>\n

The presence of sepiolite in all of these units reveals a widespread episode of liquid water creating habitable conditions in Jezero crater and infilling sediments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese minerals tell us that Jezero crater experienced a shift from harsher, hot, acidic fluids to more neutral and alkaline ones over time \u2014 conditions we think of as increasingly supportive of life,\u201d Moreland said.<\/p>\n

Because Mars samples can\u2019t be prepared or scanned as precisely as Earth samples, the team developed an uncertainty propagation model to strengthen its results<\/p>\n

Using a statistical approach, MIST repeatedly tested mineral identifications considering the potential errors, similar to how meteorologists forecast hurricane tracks by running many models.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur error analysis lets us assign confidence levels to every mineral match,\u201d Moreland said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMIST not only informs Mars 2020 science and decision-making, but it is also creating a mineralogical archive of Jezero Crater that will be invaluable if samples are returned to Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

The results confirm that Jezero crater \u2014 once home to an ancient lake \u2014 experienced a complex and dynamic aqueous history.<\/p>\n

Each new mineral discovery not only brings scientists closer to answering whether Mars ever supported life but also sharpens Perseverance\u2019s strategy for which samples to collect and return.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

Eleanor L. Moreland et al. 2025. Multiple Episodes of Fluid Alteration in Jezero Crater Indicated by MIST Mineral Identifications in PIXL XRF Data From the First 1100 Sols of the Mars 2020 Mission. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets 130 (9): e2024JE008797; doi: 10.1029\/2024JE008797<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minerals are the building blocks of rocks, and the types of minerals and their chemistry provide critical information…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[28601,28602,20179,28603,85,46,28604,15882,2758,28605,3442,9946,28606,20830,141,1951,1865],"class_list":["post-34073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ferroaluminoceladonite","tag-greenalite","tag-habitability","tag-hisingerite","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-jezero-crater","tag-lake","tag-mars","tag-mineral","tag-nasa","tag-perseverance","tag-pixl","tag-planet","tag-science","tag-solar-system","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}