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The Freya Citadel zebra stone measures roughly 20 centimeters. Photograph/NASA
“Whilst the rover used to be crossing a gravel box, a staff of NASA scientists noticed a rock within the distance with an strange texture,” mentioned the gap company as quoted through the Day by day Mail, Wednesday (25/9/2024).
Rover then took pictures of the zebra rock and named it Freya Citadel then despatched it to Earth a couple of days later. “As a result of Freya Citadel is a unfastened rock this is obviously other from the bedrock underneath it, it’s most probably that this rock got here from in different places,” NASA mentioned.
Freya Citadel measures roughly 20 centimeters. Preliminary interpretations of its distinctive texture recommend igneous and/or metamorphic processes created its traces. Igneous processes are geological actions related to the melting, motion and cooling of magma and lava.
For one thousand million years, Mars used to be an excessively volcanically energetic planet, which may have created the stipulations important for zebra rock to shape. The metamorphic procedure is a metamorphosis in rock composition because of warmth and top power.
Metamorphism makes rocks denser and extra compact, and too can create new minerals through rearranging mineral parts or triggering reactions with fluids coming into the rock.
A few month in the past, the rover started hiking a steep slope towards the rim of Jezero Crater, the place it first landed in February 2021. It used to be on the lookout for historical rocks that might supply perception into Mars’ early historical past.
The rover used to be navigating some unremarkable terrain when NASA scientists on Earth noticed a zebra rock sticking out from the planet’s dusty crimson floor.
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2024-09-27 04:50:58