The Martian Shoreline and the Perseverance Rover
This image is a hypothetical composite – it takes the surface of Mars mostly as known today and adds water up to a certain depth. There are very good reasons to believe there was once this much water on Mars for at least some time – putative shorelines have been identified from orbit based on their shape, chemical estimates based on isotopes of hydrogen suggest similar amounts of water were plausible, and many erosional features such as channels showing water flow directions.
For today, I want you to focus on the triangular shape jutting north, into the ocean basin.
That area is high ground and stands above the ocean because it’s dominated by a volcano named Syrtis Major. It’s one of the large volcanic constructs on Mars and it is found away from the larger Tharsis plateau on the opposite side of the planet, where large volcanoes like Olympus Mons are found.
See the half-circle shaped arc to the east of Syrtis Major? That is the Isidis basin, one of the last large craters to have formed on Mars. That area is flooded in this shot, creating a seashore between the ocean at the North and the Syrtis Major province.
That seashore, as defined by a large delta and chemical evidence of carbonate minerals – that’s where the Perseverance Rover is targeted. That area is where we’re hoping we can find fossil evidence that life once existed on Mars.
-JBB
Image source: https://www.planetary.org/multimedia/space-images/mars/ancient-mars-with-water.html
Reference:
http://redplanet.asu.edu/?tag=isidis-basin
