'Atoco Point': Nasa's rover stumbles upon rare boulder unseen before on Mars

NEW DELHI: NASA's Perseverance rover has discovered a distinctive light-colored boulder in Neretva Vallis on Mars, a region that was once an ancient river channel feeding into the Jezero crater, according to a report by the news platform Mashable.
This boulder stands out among the surrounding dark rocks and has been identified as potentially being an anorthosite, a rock type not previously found on Mars.
While traversing the inlet, the rover encountered a hill covered in boulders, with one particular rock attracting attention, according to Katie Stack Morgan, deputy project scientist for NASA's Mars 2020 mission.
"Every once in a while, you'll just see some strange thing in the Martian landscape, and the team is like, 'Oh, let's go over there,'" the report quoted Katie Stack Morgan as saying. "This was like the textbook definition of [chasing] the bright, shiny thing because it was so bright and white."
The boulder, named "Atoco Point," is likely an anorthosite, a type of rock common on the moon and in some of Earth's mountain ranges but previously undetected on Mars. Anorthosites are predominantly made of feldspar, a mineral associated with lava flows.
Although the Perseverance rover's team noted the boulder’s significance, they plan to search for similar rocks at the crater rim in the coming months. Collecting samples from the original context could provide more information.
"Seeing a rock like Atoco Point is one of these hints that, yes, we do have anorthosites on Mars, and this might be a sampling of that lower crust material," Stack Morgan said.
Since 2021, Perseverance rover's team has been collecting samples from the Jezero crater, an area believed to have once hosted microscopic organisms.
However, the Mars Sample Return mission, which aims to bring these samples to Earth, is also facing financial difficulties, leading to potential cancellation and a call for new proposals to save the mission.