On Mars, Perseverance rover explores 3.9 billion-year-old rocks

A few weeks ago, French exobiologist Caroline Freissinet and his colleagues announced that they had detected, thanks to the Curiosity rover, the longest organic molecules identified to date on the red planet. Intriguing! What an impact on the search for life on Mars. Caroline Freissinet is on the microphone of Ciel & Espace.

On the steep flanks of the Jezero crater, the Martian surface gradually reveals the secrets of a planet that may have been habitable. Since the end of 2024, the Perseverance rover has been exploring an area where rocks shaped by fire and others altered by water, silent witnesses of a geological history of nearly four billion years long. Between mineralogic contrasts and stratigraphic complexity, each sample enriches our understanding of Mars and…