00:00Well, here you are.
00:05You're the first person to set foot on Mars.
00:07And your first mission is to explore a place called Jezero Crater.
00:11You're wading through the thick, rust-colored dust
00:14when suddenly you trip over something and almost fall.
00:18You lean closer to examine the culprit and recoil in horror.
00:23A skull is staring back at you.
00:26Who did it belong to?
00:28An ancient Martian dinosaur?
00:30A representative of a long-lost civilization?
00:33Now, this isn't a made-up story.
00:35That's what NASA's Mars robot called Perseverance
00:38would tell you if it could speak and, you know, had consciousness.
00:42The rover had indeed found something strange.
00:45But it wasn't a real skull.
00:47It just looked like one.
00:50In reality, those were rocks that seemed to be out of place on the Red Planet.
00:54Right now, Perseverance is exploring the edge of a big,
00:58empty bowl-shaped area called Jezero Crater.
01:01Scientists think that a long, long time ago,
01:04this crater held a giant lake.
01:06Perhaps it was even full of tiny life.
01:09Since December 2024,
01:11the rover has been rolling down a steep hill called Witch Hazel Hill.
01:15It's an important mission because this hill might hold secrets about what Mars' weather
01:20and environment were like billions of years ago.
01:23Anyway, on April 11, 2025, Perseverance stopped to look at a special spot where two types of rock
01:31meet.
01:32One was light-colored and the other was dark.
01:34And right at that spot, scientists saw a weird-looking rock they later named Skull Hill.
01:41It stood out dramatically because it was dark and had a sharp shape.
01:46But the creepiest thing?
01:47It was full of little holes.
01:49A real nightmare for those with trypophobia.
01:52So NASA shared its discovery in a blog post.
01:55They explained that Skull Hill didn't look like the other rocks nearby.
01:59The area where Perseverance found these strange rocks is called Port Anson.
02:05Scientists think that many of the rocks there didn't originally form in that spot.
02:09They were moved from somewhere else an exceptionally long time ago.
02:13But how did they move?
02:15Or what moved them?
02:17Now, don't get your hopes up.
02:19It doesn't mean we'll find space neighbors on Mars.
02:22These kinds of rocks are called floats.
02:24They are likely to have traveled a long way across Mars billions of years ago, back when
02:30the planet was much warmer and wetter, with rivers, lakes, and maybe even oceans.
02:35As the water dried up and the soft ground around the rocks slowly wore away over time, the tougher
02:42rocks stayed behind, sitting on the surface.
02:45Now, scientists are trying to figure out how the strange holes on Skull Hill were made.
02:50One idea is that tiny parts of the rock broke off and wore away over time, leaving behind
02:56little pits.
02:57Another idea is that Martian winds, which carry dust in tiny rocks, might have slowly scraped
03:03the surface, kind of like sandpaper, and created the holes.
03:07Skull Hill is dark-colored, and at first, scientists thought it might be a meteorite that had come from
03:12space.
03:13But when they looked more closely at the chemicals in the rock using Perseverance's supercam,
03:18ooh, the results didn't match what you would expect from a typical meteorite.
03:24Nope.
03:25So, scientists now think Skull Hill might be a volcanic rock.
03:29On both Earth and Mars, dark volcanic rocks get their color from minerals like olivine,
03:35pyrosine, and biotite.
03:37If Skull Hill is volcanic, it might have come from old lava flows nearby that have broken down
03:43over time.
03:44Or maybe it was blasted out of the rock during a huge crash, something like an asteroid impact,
03:50that dug deep into the ground and pulled up volcanic rock from below.
03:55What helps scientists in their research is that Perseverance now has some cool tricks that
04:00help it figure out what Martian rocks are made of.
04:04That's how we can learn where the rocks came from and how they formed.
04:07Lately, the rover has been super busy.
04:10In just a few months, it has collected samples from 5 rocks, studied 7 rocks very closely,
04:16and blasted 83 rocks with its laser to learn about them from a distance.
04:21That's the fastest pace of research since the rover landed on Mars 4 years ago.
04:26At least, that's what NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab says.
04:30Usually, it can take months to find just one interesting rock in a crater.
04:34But up on the edge of the crater, aka the rim, cool and strange rocks are popping up all the time.
04:42Scientists are especially excited about getting these rock samples back to Earth
04:46to see if they'll show signs that life ever existed on Mars.
04:50But there's a problem.
04:52The plan to bring the samples back, called the Mars Sample Return Mission,
04:56is really complicated, expensive, and running into delays.
05:00So, for now, the samples are staying on Mars, waiting for their ride home.
05:07Hey, Uber!
05:08There's another rover that is currently working hard to help us get more information about our neighbor.
05:14That's Curiosity.
05:15And it might have found a clue about what happened to Mars' atmosphere from billions of years ago,
05:21thick and carbon dioxide-rich.
05:23If the red planet once had warm temperatures and flowing water,
05:28what are the signs of all the carbon that should have been left behind?
05:32Normally, a planet like that would have carbonates,
05:35minerals made when carbon dioxide reacts with water and rock buried in its soil.
05:40But on Mars, very few carbonates have ever been found, which has been a big mystery.
05:46Now, scientists might finally have an answer.
05:49A new study suggests that iron carbonate, called sidorite,
05:54may be hidden inside Mars' sulfate-rich rock layers.
05:58These layers weren't easy to spot in satellite images from orbit.
06:02That might be the reason why carbonates may have gone unnoticed for so long.
06:07At one point in the past, Mars' carbon cycle got out of balance.
06:11The rocks started pulling in more carbon dioxide than they were releasing.
06:15Over time, this may have caused Mars to lose too much CO2 from its atmosphere.
06:20It cooled the planet and made it dry and lifeless.
06:24The planet might have been still habitable when this happened,
06:27but once carbon dioxide started turning into sidorite,
06:31Mars may have begun getting too cold to support life.
06:34The Curiosity rover found these carbon-rich rocks in Gale Crater,
06:39an area on Mars that used to be full of water.
06:42The rocks also contain a lot of salts, which usually form when water dries up.
06:47This supports the idea that Mars went through some huge changes,
06:52likely from a planet with a nice climate to the cold, dry world we see today.
06:57If scientists find more sidorite in other parts of Mars,
07:01it could help explain where all that ancient carbon dioxide went.
07:05Even better, it would support the idea that Mars was once warm, wet,
07:09and maybe even habitable.
07:12But that's not the only discovery Curiosity has made.
07:16The rover has a set of special instruments called SAM.
07:20Sam's job is to study the rocks, dirt, and air on Mars to learn more about the planet.
07:25And one of Sam's biggest findings happened when it studied rocks from Gale Crater.
07:31Sam found organic molecules.
07:33Organic molecules are special because they're made of carbon,
07:37and on Earth, carbon is super important for life.
07:40Plants, animals, and people are all made from carbon-based molecules.
07:44So finding these molecules on Mars makes scientists wonder if it's another proof that Mars once had life,
07:51a long, long time ago.
07:54When Sam looked even closer, it found certain patterns in gases,
07:58like carbon dioxide and methane.
08:00These patterns might match what you would expect if tiny ancient lifeforms were making organic molecules.
08:07But there's also another explanation.
08:10These molecules might have been made by sunlight reacting with gases in Mars' air.
08:15In this case, no life would have been involved at all.
08:19On Mars, strong ultraviolet light from the Sun can break apart and mix up molecules,
08:24creating new ones that eventually land on the ground.
08:27So even though scientists don't have a clear answer yet,
08:31finding organic molecules is a really big deal.
08:35At the very least, it tells us that Mars had the right ingredients for life,
08:39even if we don't know yet if life actually existed there.
08:44Now, scientists are using Sam and Curiosity's other tools to keep searching for more clues.
08:49That's it for today.
08:51So hey, if you pacified your curiosity,
08:54then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
08:56Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side.
09:00So here's what it moi would love to see.
09:02My friends will give them a direction and
09:27a country beef with fire up.
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