NASA's Perseverance Mars rover spotted the striped rock, and the rover's initial measurements suggest it could be volcanic in origin. The rock, which has been nicknamed 'Freya Castle,' may originate from an outcropping of more of this strange material further up the slopes of Jezero.
Freya Castle looks quite unlike any rock seen on Mars before. But Perseverance could not stick around at Freya Castle to examine it for long before continuing its journey up the inner wall of the mighty Jezero crater, the interior of which the rover has been exploring since landing on Mars in February 2021.
Perseverance spotted the rock and imaged it while taking measurements with its Mastcam-Z instrument on Sept. 13, 2024 (sol 1,268 of the mission; a sol is a Martian day, which is 37 minutes longer than a day on Earth). Mastcam-Z serves as the primary "eyes" of Perseverance, providing high-resolution stereo and zoom capabilities.
However, MastCam-Z's multispectral observations of Freya Castle, which is just 7.9 inches (20cm) across, have already provided significant clues as to the rock's origin.
While a volcanic or metamorphic (wherein one type of rock is transformed into another, usually under excess temperature and/or pressure) origin may explain its stripes, it doesn't explain how Freya Castle arrived at where Perseverance found it, standing out like a sore thumb against all the other nondescript pebbles and rocks. One possibility is that it rolled down from an outcropping of similar rock higher up the slopes.
Source: www.space.com
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