A pair of new studies presented at the Joint Meeting of the Europlanet Science Congress and the Division for Planetary Science (EPSC-DPS) suggest the European Space Agency's (ESA) upcoming Mars rover mission, Rosalind Franklin, may have better odds of detecting ancient organic material than previously realized. It all comes down to natural processes that occurred at the rover's landing site: the clay-rich Oxia Planum.

One of the studies, led by Dr. Aleksandra Sokołowska of Brown University and Imperial College London, has identified 258 rockfalls around the Oxia Planum region using high-resolution imagery from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)

The rockfalls may expose material from beneath the Martian surface. Additionally, tracks carved by falling rocks or sliding debris could br

See Full Page