Some rivers on Mars were deeper and flowing faster than previously believed. This is indicated by the images collected by NASA's Perseverance rover that were compared with the debris brought from terrestrial rivers by a multidisciplinary research team led by Michael Lamb of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Today on Mars there is no liquid water but its surface clearly shows the signs left by large masses of water that billions of years ago flowed freely, large seas, lakes and rivers. But being able to imagine what these ancient rivers were like is not easy at all because Mars has many different characteristics from our plants, first of all a lower gravity, and wind erosion and the effects of time have certainly changed what is visible today.
The Perseverance laboratory rover in recent years has photographed the terrain near the so-called Jezero crater and in recent weeks is exploring some layers of very high sediments, about 250 meters, which seem to suggest a landscape very different from what has been imagined so far.
The shape and arrangement of pebbles brought by rivers are used on Earth in order to have a lot of information about rivers and the same is done by studying the Martian landscape. Unlike other areas explored by Perseverance and the twin rover Curiosity, the signs found in this area, the stratification of sediments and the presence of rather large pebbles, would suggest the presence of a rushing river capable of digging the ground in depth. A different landscape compared to the calm rivers so far identified by previous analyses.
