A study group led by scientists from the University of California in Los Angeles and the University of Oslo found that the layers of rock beneath the crater of Esero, observed by the georadar of the rover Perseverance, were suddenly tilted; the position, thickness and shape of those sites suggested that they had formed either a slow-cold lava or had appeared as natural deposits in a place that used to be a lake.
Perseverance is now exploring a delta on the western edge of Ezero's crater, a river that once fed an ancient lake, leaving behind a large pile of dirt and stones that it collected in its path, as the raspberry gathers more data, scientists learn more about the complex history of this part of the Red Planet, and recently the raspfaX provided the first pictures of the underground soil of Mars, made by the RIMFAX scanner.
"We were very surprised to find stones folded at an inclined angle," explains David Paige, a professor at the University of California in Los Angeles and one of the leading researchers of the RIMFAX scanner. "We expected to see horizontal rocks at the bottom of the crater. The fact that they were tilted in this way requires a more complex geological history. They could have been formed when the molten rock went up to the surface, or they were old delta sediments buried in the bottom of the crater."
The author of the study noted that most of the data collected so far by the rover indicates the magical origin of the rock, but based on RIMFAX data, scientists are not yet able to tell exactly how the slopes formed.
RIMFAX receives an image of underground objects using radar waves that reflect layers of rock and other underground "obstructions." Forms, density, thickness, angles and the composition of objects affect the reflection of radar waves by creating a visual image.