The Perseverance robot climbs a slope that could record evidence of ancient Martian biology.
A delta is a structure built up from the silt and sand dumped by a river as it enters a wider body of water. The sudden deceleration that occurs in the river's flow allows anything carried in suspension to fall out.
"Also, if there is life in the hinterland, this can get brought down the river and concentrated in a delta." "The rover has an amazing suite of instruments that can tell us about the chemistry, mineralogy and structure of the delta, by examining the sediments all the way down to the scale of a grain of salt," said mission scientist Prof Briony Horgan from Purdue University, Indiana.
It's unlikely the robot itself will be able to make any definitive statements - as smart as its instruments are. Even on Earth, where we know microbial life has existed for billions of years, the evidence of its earliest fossilised forms is hard to interpret, even contentious. "I don't think that the instruments we have by themselves can provide that level of proof. They can provide a level of 'we think this might be it', and then we bring the samples back to Earth and we use the more sophisticated larger instruments here to make sure," she told BBC News.Artwork: The samples would need to leave Mars for Earth on a rocket launched from Jezero Crater
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