{"id":50412,"date":"2025-04-25T21:35:10","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T21:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/50412\/"},"modified":"2025-04-25T21:35:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T21:35:10","slug":"nasas-perseverance-rover-finds-strange-rocks-on-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/50412\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s Perseverance Rover Finds Strange Rocks on Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paywall\">Satellite observations had shown alternating stripes of light-colored and dark-colored rock in this area. In late March, Perseverance excavated one of the light-colored formations and collected a sample. In the process it discovered the strange rock\u2014which has been named \u201cSt. Paul&#8217;s Bay.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A photo of the St. Paul\u2019s Bay rock, the darker object on the right of the image. This photo was taken by Perseverance on March 13, 2025, using Mastcam-Z.<\/p>\n<p>PHOTOGRAPH: NASA\/JPL-CALTECH\/ASU<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">According to the Perseverance team, St. Paul\u2019s Bay is a \u201cfloat\u201d rock\u2014that is, a rock that should not exist at this location. But what created this rock formation on Mars, and how it came to be located in this region, remains unknown. This rock appears to be made up of smaller, round, dark gray stones each several hundred millimeters in size. The shapes of these small round stones vary: Some are oval-shaped, some have sharp edges, and some have small holes in them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">It\u2019s possible that these <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/blog\/shocking-spherules\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">spherules are concretions<\/a>\u2014formations created by groundwater moving through pores in a rock, which suggests that there might have once been abundant liquid water on Mars. However, on Earth these spherules are also created when molten rock cools rapidly, for example after a volcanic eruption. The Perseverance science team is investigating the origin of the small round stones that make up St. Paul\u2019s Bay. It is possible that they are derived from a dark-colored stripe of rock formation observed nearby.<\/p>\n<p>A magnified view of the St. Paul\u2019s Bay rock. This photo was taken by Perseverance on March 11, 2025, with the Remote Micro Imager (RMI) on its SuperCam.<\/p>\n<p>PHOTOGRAPH: NASA\/JPL-CALTECH\/LANL\/CNES\/IRAP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Satellite observations had shown alternating stripes of light-colored and dark-colored rock in this area. In late March, Perseverance&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[790,27111,874,27112,70,413,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-50412","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-mars","9":"tag-mars-rover","10":"tag-nasa","11":"tag-rocks","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-space","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114400757292855857","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50412","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=50412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}