While NASA’s Perseverance rover is studying the surface of the Red Planet, scientists are using data it has collected on Lake Salda in southwestern Turkey.
According to the researchers, the minerals and rock deposits on this lake are most likely as similar to those that will be found at the bottom of the Yesero crater on Mars. The Martian crater is believed to have been a lake billions of years ago, and may even contain microbiological life, NTD reports.
NASA spokesman Thomas Tsurbuchen said that “Lake Salda and the crater of Yesero are very similar. We will use it for many years.”
Information gathered from Lake Salda could help scientists search for fossilized traces of microbial life. They are believed to have survived in sediments around the river delta that once fed the dried-out lake.
Tsurbuchen says that Lake Salda will be a powerful analogue: “We can come up with some ideas, and then first test them on the lake before using the Persistence rover. Or, for example, if the rover finds something, then we can compare it with what is in the lake and find similarities. “
In 2019, a group of American and Turkish scientists conducted research on the shoreline of Lake Salda, known as the Turkish Maldives. She concluded that the sediments around the lake were composed of microbialites, a rock made from mud that was formed by microbes. Now the plans are to find out if there are microbialites in the Yesero crater.