A fascinating new image from NASA revealed the pale white and blue layers of ancient Martian bedrock.
The view captured the sediments on the floor of a canyon near a feature known as Syrtis Major and provides us the history of the landscape.
According to DailyMail, the researchers have stated that the striations illustrated a chronological stacking of the sediments, with younger layers of the dust and wind-blown materials partially covering the rocks beneath.
The region, well known as Nili Fossae, is a candidate for a future robotic mission, and researchers said that various colors and tones of the rock reveal changes in the composition of the sediments.
In the National Geographic channel, Brown University's Jack Mustard (one of the experts consulting with NASA) said, "On Earth, our ancient rock record has been through the washing machine and the ringer so many times that the fact that anything still retains any signature of its age is a miracle. The rocks on Mars would not have been processed to the same extent, would not have been beaten up so much, would not have been stretched and heated and squished and buried."
Mustard continued and revealed that some 50 percent of the Martian surface contains intact rocks dating back to those crucial first billion years of the planet's formation.
Still, NASA's first encounter with the Martian fossil underscored the challenges of finding evidence of extinct microbial life on another world.
According to researchers, there have been certain kinds of variations in these layers which revealed how the Martian environment has changed from inside.
However, NASA isn't the only agency sending robots to the red planet. In September, ESA revealed the swirly valleys of one of its ExoMars candidate landing sites.
These are Mawrth Vallis, Oxia Planum, Hypanis Vallis and Aram Dorsum.
Each of these locations is relatively close to the equator and contain "ancient rocks where liquid water was once abundant."
