On Wednesday (Sept. 10), NASA officers will share particulars a couple of new discovering linked to a singular pattern the Perseverance rover discovered on Mars.
The teleconference will stream on the company’s website at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) and is anticipated to incorporate some “visuals” through the dialogue. You’ll additionally be capable of tune in proper right here on Space.com, as our homepage will carry the stream as effectively.
An official press release in regards to the convention fosters some suspense, solely providing a sparse clarification in regards to the discovery. What it does say, nevertheless, is that Perseverance collected the rock at hand in July of 2024 from Jezero Crater — a location on Mars the rover has been exploring since February 2021 and which NASA believes might have as soon as hosted life as we all know it.
More particularly, the discharge says the rock is called “Sapphire Canyon” and comes from a spot known as “Neretva Vallis,” which it explains as a “river valley carved by water rushing into Jezero Crater long ago.”
And we do know some issues about Sapphire Canyon usually.
For occasion, NASA has previously described it as an arrowhead-shaped rock that was extracted from one other “vein-filled rock” named “Cheyava Falls.” Cheyava Falls is iconic for its “poppy seeds” and “leopard spots,” patterns the Perseverance group seen adorning the specimen when first observing it.
But Cheyava Falls is most well-known for one thing else. In a video about Sapphire Canyon, posted by NASA on April 10, 2025, Morgan Cable, a analysis scientist for Perseverance, says Cheyava Falls is “the only place we’ve found on Mars so far where we have chemical evidence that chemical reactions associated with life could have been happening, as well as organic molecules.”
It can be of word that Sapphire Canyon is one among many samples the Perseverance group has been accumulating with the hopes of bringing items of the Red Planet again to Earth in the future. It’s the twenty fifth pattern, to be precise. That sample-retrieval course of was initially meant to be achieved with NASA’s Mars Sample Return program — however on account of funds constraints, a somewhat advanced launch blueprint and precedence shifts because the Trump administration took workplace, the destiny of MSR hangs unsure.
It is but to be identified whether or not the actual pattern NASA will likely be speaking about tomorrow will name for Earth-based evaluation to comply with, however based mostly on the opinions of scientists who help MSR, it could be unsurprising if that seems to be the case.
“I would describe the Sapphire Canyon sample as mysterious,” Cable says in that April 10 video. “Could life have been involved? Or, something that didn’t involve life at all? We’re not going to know until we bring that sample back and do some more measurements.”
According to the company’s launch, a paper will likely be finally be launched to element the discovering; tomorrow’s convention will likely be attended by the next company officers:
- Sean Duffy, NASA’s performing administrator
- Nicky Fox, affiliate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington
- Lindsay Hays, Senior Scientist for Mars Exploration, Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters
- Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance Project Scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California
- Joel Hurowitz, planetary scientist, Stony Brook University, New York