We now have a better picture of where the European Space Agency is. Rosalind Franklin ExoMars rover He will drive when he lands. Anthem for the life-searching mission, thanks to a brand new geological map of the landing site.
“This map is exciting because it’s a guide that shows us where to find the answers,” said Peter Fawdon, from the UK’s Open University. press release. “It serves as a visual hypothesis for what we currently know about the different rocks at the landing site. The instruments on board Rosalind Franklin will allow us to test our knowledge in situ when the time comes.”
There was initially a partnership with Russia, which provided the landing platform for the rover. postponed Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. The new launch date is planned for no earlier than October 2028 as scientists revamp the mission and design and build a new landing platform with the intention of reaching Mars by 2030.
Relating to: ExoMars: European astrobiology missions to Mars
The chances of finding living microbes on Mars today are slim, given the red planet’s cold, dry, and irradiated conditions; but the prevailing hypothesis is that Mars was warm and wet and had potentially habitable conditions 3.5 billion years ago. We see evidence for this in the ruins river channelsfloodplains and coasts, the mineralogy of these areas and presence of organic molecules.
If life existed long ago, perhaps its biosignatures remain locked in Martian rocks, waiting to be discovered by the Rosalind Franklin rover.
The rover’s mission will involve driving for miles across the Oxia Planum, a massive plain rich in clay-containing minerals formed long ago by liquid water. The rover will routinely drill 2 meters (6.5 feet) into these clay deposits and retrieve samples that will be analyzed by the rover’s onboard ‘Pasteur’ instrumentation.
Clay is considered an excellent material for preserving biological signatures, and the tools the rover will use to study these samples include the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer (MOMA), which will test the sampled material to try and identify organic, carbon-based molecules. Things only life could leave behind, like amino acids, lipids, and even RNA and DNA (or their analogues on Mars). Hence why itinerant Named after Rosalind FranklinBritish chemist who played a critical role in understanding the structure of DNA.
However, when the rover’s wheels touched the Martian soil, scientists set off again. Soil He needs to know where to take Rosalind Franklin to have the best chance of achieving his goals.
The new map will therefore help scientists plan the rover’s journey by identifying 15 specific geological units in the Oxia Planum region, including rock fields. transverse wind ridges (TARs) are believed to be formed by wind, widely spaced fractures, craters and ejecta, honeycomb material consisting of polygonal and linear grooves, overlying dark material, and associated materials such as different bedrock types and sediment layers dating back approximately 4 billion years. .
It is still unclear how all these features are formed; Polygonal forms have often been associated with subsurface ice or permafrost typically found at higher latitudes, but the existence of ice beneath the surface of Oxia Planum, located at low latitude 18 degrees north of the Martian equator, has not yet been explored (although Ice found elsewhere near Mars’ equator).
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These various geological types and the periods from which they originate (Noachian period from 4.1 to 3.7 billion years ago, Hesperian period from 3.7 to 3 billion years ago, and Amazonian period from 3 billion years ago to the present) are colored. -coded on the map. It has a scale of 1:25000; This means that every centimeter (0.4 inches) on the map represents 250 meters (820 feet) on Mars. The rover’s average daily drive of 25-50 meters (82-164 feet) will cover only a few millimeters on the map.
The genesis of the map was actually a COVID lockdown project, in which 80 trained volunteers characterized 134 individual locations, each one square kilometer, based on data from the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter in Europe and NASA. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The rover’s lead scientists then put together all the information from the volunteers to create the final version of the map. Maps Magazine.