{"id":188065,"date":"2025-06-16T04:20:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T04:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/188065\/"},"modified":"2025-06-16T04:20:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T04:20:11","slug":"volcano-found-hiding-in-plain-sight-right-next-to-nasa-mars-rover-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/188065\/","title":{"rendered":"Volcano Found Hiding ‘In Plain Sight’ Right Next to NASA Mars Rover : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, it’s really hard to see the volcanoes for the rocks, especially if you’re just a one-ton rover all alone in a remote crater on Mars<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, a bump on the rim of Jezero Crater is indeed a volcano, scientists have ruled \u2013 and the finding, thanks to NASA’s Perseverance rover, has really exciting implications.<\/p>\n

“Volcanism on Mars is intriguing for a number of reasons \u2013 from the implications it has on habitability, to better constraining the geologic history,” says planetary scientist James Wray<\/a> from the Georgia Institute of Technology.<\/p>\n

“Jezero Crater is one of the best studied sites on Mars. If we are just now identifying a volcano here, imagine how many more could be on Mars. Volcanoes may be even more widespread across Mars than we thought.”<\/p>\n

\"\"The location of Jezero Mons is not far from where the Perseverance rover landed. (Cuevas-Qui\u00f1ones et al., Commun. Earth Environ.<\/a>, 2025)<\/p>\n

Wray noticed the mountain, called Jezero Mons<\/a>, back in 2007, but there wasn’t enough evidence to support the interpretation that it was a volcano. Then Perseverance started finding volcanic rocks on the crater floor. Suspicions grew that Jezero Mons may have burst upward from Mars’ molten interior.<\/p>\n

To confirm speculations, a team led by planetary scientist Sara Cuevas-Qui\u00f1ones of Georgia Tech decided to conduct a thorough investigation, looking for known characteristics of volcanoes here on Earth.<\/p>\n

“We used data from the Mars Odyssey Orbiter, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, and Perseverance Rover, all in combination to puzzle this out,” Wray explains<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"A reconstruction of the shape of Jezero Mons, colored to show elevation. (Cuevas-Qui\u00f1ones et al., Commun. Earth Environ.<\/a>, 2025)<\/p>\n

Their verdict? Jezero Mons is volcanic. It even has a volcanic crater. It’s not active now, and likely hasn’t been for a very long time, but this identification will make Perseverance’s findings easier to interpret.<\/p>\n

There’s another interesting takeaway: Jezero Crater was once a lake<\/a>. If it was sitting right next to a steaming pile of active volcano, the conditions may have been warm enough in the lake for life.<\/p>\n

“The coalescence of these two types of systems makes Jezero more interesting than ever,” Wray says<\/a>. “We have samples of incredible sedimentary rocks that could be from a habitable region alongside igneous rocks with important scientific value.”<\/p>\n

The findings are published in Communications Earth & Environment<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sometimes, it’s really hard to see the volcanoes for the rocks, especially if you’re just a one-ton rover…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[120,70,413,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-188065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-msft-content","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-space","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114691127718684982","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}