NASA’s Perseverance Rover Reads Record of Ancient Mars Impacts

NASA News reports that Perseverance has discovered a thick stack of ancient Martian rock with an extraordinary story. The rover found evidence that a two-hundred-forty-five-foot-thick layer of bedrock on Jezero Crater's rim was built by repeated asteroid impacts over billions of years. More than three point nine billion years old, the rock contains six distinct types of stone, including fragments once molten and tiny glassy beads rivaling those from the dinosaur-killing Chicxulub impact. What makes this discovery rare and valuable: Mars never had plate tectonics to recycle its crust. This ancient impact layer remains intact — a window into one of the solar system's most violent eras. Scientists collected core samples that could be dated on Earth, potentially revealing how often the early solar system endured asteroid bombardment.

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