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Oh!
This is so cool!
Oh, hey there!
Squeaks and I decided to watch the video of
the Perseverance Rover landing on Mars… again.
It’s just that amazing to see!
The Perseverance Rover is a robot that recently landed on Mars.
It’s carrying all kinds of cool science equipment…
like cameras, lasers, and computers.
It even has a little helicopter that can fly over the surface of the planet!
Perseverance was launched by NASA,
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which is in the United States.
But it’s only one machine being used to study the planet Mars!
The United Arab Emirates launched a satellite named “Hope”
that’s circling Mars right now… and the European Space Agency
is working on sending a rover there, too.
People all over the world are really, really interested in studying Mars!
Oh!
Good question, Squeaks!
There are lots of reasons people are studying Mars.
And one of them is Mars’ old, gigantic ocean!
It is surprising!
So many of the pictures we see show Mars as a rusty red color.
And when we think of Earth’s oceans, we think of the color…
Blue!
We can see Earth’s lovely blue oceans when we look at it from space.
But when we look at Mars, the water we can see is here.
It looks white.
Why do you think it’s that color?
Good!
The water we can see is white because it’s frozen into ice.
Great observation!
Squeaks says it’s like some of Earth’s water.
The water that’s at Earth’s North and South poles is also frozen into ice.
So on Earth we see both solid water frozen into ice,
and liquid water in the oceans.
When we look at Mars from space, we don’t see big blue oceans.
Which means we can’t see any liquid water on Mars!
But we do see things that make us think that billions of years ago,
way before people were around, Mars had an ocean of liquid water
that completely covered its North Pole… and then some!
Ah, it’s a good question.
We think that Mars had an ocean because of what we know about water on Earth.
Water can change the shape of the land.
We see this all the time on Earth’s surface.
For example, the Grand Canyon in Arizona.
Over millions of years the Colorado River has worn away,
or eroded the rock in the canyon… carving out a twisting, curvy path as it flows.
And we see similar shapes like this on Mars.
We don’t see flowing liquid water…
but we can see a path that looks like one made by a river!
We can see something else, too, at the end of many of these paths,
we see piles of sand and rock.
By studying rivers on Earth we know that, as water wears down rock,
it picks up tiny pieces of sand and grit.
These pieces get swept along with the rushing water.
But the water often slows down when it gets near the ocean.
When that happens, the pieces fall out
and form a pile of sand and dirt called a delta.
Lots of Earth’s rivers, like the Amazon River, have deltas.
So when we see them on Mars, we have a reason
to think that there used to be a river there.
In fact, Perseverance landed in a place we think was once a river delta on Mars!
We can even see what look like ocean shores here on Earth…
places where the waves of a Mars ocean might have eroded the land,
wearing it away and forming wavy-looking ridges.
There’s a lot that we don’t know about Mars’ oceans, though.
Scientists are trying to learn more about
what the ocean was like and why it disappeared.
They also want to see if anything could have lived in that water!
We don’t know what we’ll find yet, but we’re having a great time exploring
and learning about Mars in the meantime!
Speaking of that…
I found a couple of other videos
about Perseverance that you just have to watch!
Thanks for joining us here at The Fort!
If you want to keep learning and having fun with me, Jessi,
Squeaks and all of our other friends, be sure to hit the subscribe button,
and we'll see you next time on SciShow Kids!
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