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Explore This Section Perseverance Home Mission Overview Rover Components Mars Rock Samples Where is Perseverance? Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Mission Updates Science Overview Objectives Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Perseverance Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 3 min read
Visiting Mars on the Way to the Outer Solar System
Written by Roger Wiens, Principal Investigator, SuperCam instrument / Co-Investigator, SHERLOC instrument at Purdue University
A portion of the “Sally’s Cove” outcrop where the Perseverance rover has been exploring. The radiating lines in the rock on the left of the image may indicate that it is a shatter cone, showing the effects of the shock wave from a nearby large impact. The image was taken by Mastcam-Z’s left camera on March 21, 2025 (Sol 1452, or Martian day 1,452 of the Mars 2020 mission) at the local mean solar time of 12:13:44. Mastcam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rover’s mast. This image was voted by the public as “Image of the week.” NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU Recently Mars has had a few Earthly visitors. On March 1, NASA’s Europa Clipper flew within 550 miles (884 kilometers) of the Red Planet’s surface on its way out to Jupiter. On March 12, the European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft flew within about 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) of Mars, and only 300 kilometers from its moon, Deimos. Hera is on its way to study the binary asteroid Didymos and its moon Dimorphos. Next year, in May 2026, NASA’s Psyche mission is scheduled to buzz the Red Planet on its way to the metal-rich asteroid 16 Psyche, coming within a few thousand kilometers.
Why all these visits to Mars? You might at first think that they’re using Mars as an object of opportunity for their cameras, and you would be partially right. But Mars has more to give these missions than that. The main reason for these flybys is the extra speed that Mars’ velocity around the Sun can give them. The idea that visiting a planet can speed up a spacecraft is not all that obvious, because the same gravity that attracts the spacecraft on its way towards the planet will exert a backwards force as the spacecraft leaves the planet.
The key is in the direction that it approaches and leaves the planet. If the spacecraft leaves Mars heading in the direction that Mars is traveling around the Sun, it will gain speed in that direction, slingshotting it farther into the outer solar system. A spacecraft can typically gain several percent of its speed by performing such a slingshot flyby. The closer it gets to the planet, the bigger the effect. However, no mission wants to be slowed by the upper atmosphere, so several hundred kilometers is the closest that a mission should go. And the proximity to the planet is also affected by the exact direction the spacecraft needs to go when it leaves Mars.
Clipper’s Mars flyby was a slight exception, slowing down the craft — by about 1.2 miles per second (2 kilometers per second) — to steer it toward Earth for a second gravity assist in December 2026. That will push the spacecraft the rest of the way to Jupiter, for its 2030 arrival.
While observing Mars is not the main reason for their visits, many of the visiting spacecraft take the opportunity to use their cameras either to perform calibrations or to study the Red Planet and its moons.
During Clipper’s flyby over sols 1431-1432, Mastcam-Z was directed to watch the skies for signs of the interplanetary visitor. Clipper’s relatively large solar panels could have reflected enough sunlight for it to be seen in the Mars night sky, much as we can see satellites overhead from Earth. Unfortunately, the spacecraft entered the shadow of Mars just before it came into potential view above the horizon from Perseverance’s vantage point, so the sighting did not happen. But it was worth a try.
Meanwhile, back on the ground, Perseverance is performing something of a cliff-hanger. “Sally’s Cove” is a relatively steep rock outcrop in the outer portion of Jezero crater’s rim just north of “Broom Hill.” Perseverance made an approach during March 19-23, and has been exploring some dark-colored rocks along this outcrop, leaving the spherules behind for the moment. Who knows what Perseverance will find next?
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Last Updated Mar 28, 2025 Related Terms
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
At left is NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, with a circle indicating the location of the calibration target for the rover’s SHERLOC instrument. At right is a close-up of the calibration target. Along the bottom row are five swatches of spacesuit materials that scientists are studying as they de-grade.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS The rover carries several swatches of spacesuit materials, and scientists are assessing how they’ve held up after four years on the Red Planet.
NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars in 2021 to search for signs of ancient microbial life and to help scientists understand the planet’s climate and geography. But another key objective is to pave the way for human exploration of Mars, and as part of that effort, the rover carries a set of five spacesuit material samples. Now, after those samples have endured four years of exposure on Mars’ dusty, radiation-soaked surface, scientists are beginning the next phase of studying them.
The end goal is to predict accurately the usable lifetime of a Mars spacesuit. What the agency learns about how the materials perform on Mars will inform the design of future spacesuits for the first astronauts on the Red Planet.
This graphic shows an illustration of a prototype astronaut suit, left, along with suit samples included aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover. They are the first spacesuit materials ever sent to Mars. NASA “This is one of the forward-looking aspects of the rover’s mission — not just thinking about its current science, but also about what comes next,” said planetary scientist Marc Fries of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, who helped provide the spacesuit materials. “We’re preparing for people to eventually go and explore Mars.”
The swatches, each three-quarters of an inch square (20 millimeters square), are part of a calibration target used to test the settings of SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals), an instrument on the end of Perseverance’s arm.
The samples include a piece of polycarbonate helmet visor; Vectran, a cut-resistant material used for the palms of astronaut gloves; two kinds of Teflon, which has dust-repelling nonstick properties; and a commonly used spacesuit material called Ortho-Fabric. This last fabric features multiple layers, including Nomex, a flame-resistant material found in firefighter outfits; Gore-Tex, which is waterproof but breathable; and Kevlar, a strong material used in bulletproof vests that makes spacesuits more rip-resistant.
Martian Wear and Tear
Mars is far from hospitable. It has freezing temperatures, fine dust that can stick to solar panels and spacesuits (causing wear and tear on the latter), and a surface rife with perchlorates, a kind of corrosive salt that can be toxic to humans.
There’s also lots of solar radiation. Unlike Earth, which has a magnetic field that deflects much of the Sun’s radiation, Mars lost its magnetic field billions of years ago, followed by much of its atmosphere. Its surface has little protection from the Sun’s ultraviolet light (which is why researchers have looked into how rock formations and caves could provide astronauts some shielding).
“Mars is a really harsh, tough place,” said SHERLOC science team member Joby Razzell Hollis of the Natural History Museum in London. “Don’t underestimate that — the radiation in particular is pretty nasty.”
Razzell Hollis was a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California from 2018 to 2021, where he helped prepare SHERLOC for arrival on Mars and took part in science operations once the rover landed. A materials scientist, Razzell Hollis has previously studied the chemical effects of sunlight on a new kind of solar panel made from plastic, as well as on plastic pollution floating in the Earth’s oceans.
He likened those effects to how white plastic lawn chairs become yellow and brittle after years in sunlight. Roughly the same thing happens on Mars, but the weathering likely happens faster because of the high exposure to ultraviolet light there.
The key to developing safer spacesuit materials will be understanding how quickly they would wear down on the Martian surface. About 50% of the changes SHERLOC witnessed in the samples happened within Perseverance’s first 200 days on Mars, with the Vectran appearing to change first.
Another nuance will be figuring out how much solar radiation different parts of a spacesuit will have to withstand. For example, an astronaut’s shoulders will be more exposed — and likely encounter more radiation — than his or her palms.
Next Steps
The SHERLOC team is working on a science paper detailing initial data on how the samples have fared on Mars. Meanwhile, scientists at NASA Johnson are eager to simulate that weathering in special chambers that mimic the carbon dioxide atmosphere, air pressure, and ultraviolet light on the Martian surface. They could then compare the results generated on Earth while putting the materials to the test with those seen in the SHERLOC data. For example, the researchers could stretch the materials until they break to check if they become more brittle over time.
“The fabric materials are designed to be tough but flexible, so they protect astronauts but can bend freely,” Fries said. “We want to know the extent to which the fabrics lose their strength and flexibility over time. As the fabrics weaken, they can fray and tear, allowing a spacesuit to leak both heat and air.”
More About Perseverance
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover is characterizing the planet’s geology and past climate, to help pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and is the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
NASA’s Mars Sample Return Program, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), is designed to send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program (MEP) portfolio and the agency’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more about Perseverance:
News Media Contacts
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
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karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Mar 26, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
Researchers analyzing pulverized rock onboard NASA’s Curiosity rover have found the largest organic compounds on the Red Planet to date. The finding, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests prebiotic chemistry may have advanced further on Mars than previously observed.
Scientists probed an existing rock sample inside Curiosity’s Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) mini-lab and found the molecules decane, undecane, and dodecane. These compounds, which are made up of 10, 11, and 12 carbons, respectively, are thought to be the fragments of fatty acids that were preserved in the sample. Fatty acids are among the organic molecules that on Earth are chemical building blocks of life.
Living things produce fatty acids to help form cell membranes and perform various other functions. But fatty acids also can be made without life, through chemical reactions triggered by various geological processes, including the interaction of water with minerals in hydrothermal vents.
While there’s no way to confirm the source of the molecules identified, finding them at all is exciting for Curiosity’s science team for a couple of reasons.
Curiosity scientists had previously discovered small, simple organic molecules on Mars, but finding these larger compounds provides the first evidence that organic chemistry advanced toward the kind of complexity required for an origin of life on Mars.
This graphic shows the long-chain organic molecules decane, undecane, and dodecane. These are the largest organic molecules discovered on Mars to date. They were detected in a drilled rock sample called “Cumberland” that was analyzed by the Sample Analysis at Mars lab inside the belly of NASA’s Curiosity rover. The rover, whose selfie is on the right side of the image, has been exploring Gale Crater since 2012. An image of the Cumberland drill hole is faintly visible in the background of the molecule chains. NASA/Dan Gallagher The new study also increases the chances that large organic molecules that can be made only in the presence of life, known as “biosignatures,” could be preserved on Mars, allaying concerns that such compounds get destroyed after tens of millions of years of exposure to intense radiation and oxidation.
This finding bodes well for plans to bring samples from Mars to Earth to analyze them with the most sophisticated instruments available here, the scientists say.
“Our study proves that, even today, by analyzing Mars samples we could detect chemical signatures of past life, if it ever existed on Mars,” said Caroline Freissinet, the lead study author and research scientist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in the Laboratory for Atmospheres and Space Observations in Guyancourt, France
In 2015, Freissinet co-led a team that, in a first, conclusively identified Martian organic molecules in the same sample that was used for the current study. Nicknamed “Cumberland,” the sample has been analyzed many times with SAM using different techniques.
NASA’s Curiosity rover drilled into this rock target, “Cumberland,” during the 279th Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s work on Mars (May 19, 2013) and collected a powdered sample of material from the rock’s interior. Curiosity used the Mars Hand Lens Imager camera on the rover’s arm to capture this view of the hole in Cumberland on the same sol as the hole was drilled. The diameter of the hole is about 0.6 inches. The depth of the hole is about 2.6 inches. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Curiosity drilled the Cumberland sample in May 2013 from an area in Mars’ Gale Crater called “Yellowknife Bay.” Scientists were so intrigued by Yellowknife Bay, which looked like an ancient lakebed, they sent the rover there before heading in the opposite direction to its primary destination of Mount Sharp, which rises from the floor of the crater.
The detour was worth it: Cumberland turns out to be jam-packed with tantalizing chemical clues to Gale Crater’s 3.7-billion-year past. Scientists have previously found the sample to be rich in clay minerals, which form in water. It has abundant sulfur, which can help preserve organic molecules. Cumberland also has lots of nitrates, which on Earth are essential to the health of plants and animals, and methane made with a type of carbon that on Earth is associated with biological processes.
Perhaps most important, scientists determined that Yellowknife Bay was indeed the site of an ancient lake, providing an environment that could concentrate organic molecules and preserve them in fine-grained sedimentary rock called mudstone.
“There is evidence that liquid water existed in Gale Crater for millions of years and probably much longer, which means there was enough time for life-forming chemistry to happen in these crater-lake environments on Mars,” said Daniel Glavin, senior scientist for sample return at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and a study co-author.
The recent organic compounds discovery was a side effect of an unrelated experiment to probe Cumberland for signs of amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. After heating the sample twice in SAM’s oven and then measuring the mass of the molecules released, the team saw no evidence of amino acids. But they noticed that the sample released small amounts of decane, undecane, and dodecane.
Because these compounds could have broken off from larger molecules during heating, scientists worked backward to figure out what structures they may have come from. They hypothesized these molecules were remnants of the fatty acids undecanoic acid, dodecanoic acid, and tridecanoic acid, respectively.
The scientists tested their prediction in the lab, mixing undecanoic acid into a Mars-like clay and conducting a SAM-like experiment. After being heated, the undecanoic acid released decane, as predicted. The researchers then referenced experiments already published by other scientists to show that the undecane could have broken off from dodecanoic acid and dodecane from tridecanoic acid.
The authors found an additional intriguing detail in their study related to the number of carbon atoms that make up the presumed fatty acids in the sample. The backbone of each fatty acid is a long, straight chain of 11 to 13 carbons, depending on the molecule. Notably, non-biological processes typically make shorter fatty acids, with less than 12 carbons.
It’s possible that the Cumberland sample has longer-chain fatty acids, the scientists say, but SAM is not optimized to detect longer chains.
Scientists say that, ultimately, there’s a limit to how much they can infer from molecule-hunting instruments that can be sent to Mars. “We are ready to take the next big step and bring Mars samples home to our labs to settle the debate about life on Mars,” said Glavin.
This research was funded by NASA’s Mars Exploration Program. Curiosity’s Mars Science Laboratory mission is led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA. SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) was built and tested at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. CNES (the French Space Agency) funded and provided the gas chromatograph subsystem on SAM. Charles Malespin is SAM’s principal investigator.
By Lonnie Shekhtman
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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By NASA
5 min read
Atomic Layer Processing Coating Techniques Enable Missions to See Further into the Ultraviolet
Astrophysics observations at ultraviolet (UV) wavelengths often probe the most dynamic aspects of the universe. However, the high energy of ultraviolet photons means that their interaction with the materials that make up an observing instrument are less efficient, resulting in low overall throughput. New approaches in the development of thin film coatings are addressing this shortcoming by engineering the coatings of instrument structures at the atomic scale.
Researchers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) are employing atomic layer deposition (ALD) and atomic layer etching (ALE) to enable new coating technologies for instruments measuring ultraviolet light. Conventional optical coatings largely rely on physical vapor deposition (PVD) methods like evaporation, where the coating layer is formed by vaporizing the source material and then condensing it onto the intended substrate. In contrast, ALD and ALE rely on a cyclic series of self-limiting chemical reactions that result in the deposition (or removal) of material one atomic layer at a time. This self-limiting characteristic results in a coating or etchings that are conformal over arbitrary shapes with precisely controlled layer thickness determined by the number of ALD or ALE cycles performed.
The ALD and ALE techniques are common in the semiconductor industry where they are used to fabricate high-performance transistors. Their use as an optical coating method is less common, particularly at ultraviolet wavelengths where the choice of optical coating material is largely restricted to metal fluorides instead of more common metal oxides, due to the larger optical band energy of fluoride materials, which minimizes absorption losses in the coatings. Using an approach based on co-reaction with hydrogen fluoride, the team at JPL has developed a variety of fluoride-based ALD and ALE processes.
(left) The Supernova remnants and Proxies for ReIonization Testbed Experiment (SPRITE) CubeSat primary mirror inside the ALD coating facility at JPL, the mirror is 18 cm on the long and is the largest optic coated in this chamber to-date. (right) Flight optic coating inside JPL ALD chamber for Pioneers Aspera Mission. Like SPRITE, the Aspera coating combines a lithium fluoride process developed at NASA GSFC with thin ALD encapsulation of magnesium fluoride at JPL. Image Credit: NASA-JPL In addition to these metal-fluoride materials, layers of aluminum are often used to construct structures like reflective mirrors and bandpass filters for instruments operating in the UV. Although aluminum has high intrinsic UV reflectance, it also readily forms a surface oxide that strongly absorbs UV light. The role of the metal fluoride coating is then to protect the aluminum surface from oxidation while maintaining enough transparency to create a mirror with high reflectance.
The use of ALD in this context has initially been pursued in the development of telescope optics for two SmallSat astrophysics missions that will operate in the UV: the Supernova remnants and Proxies for ReIonization Testbed Experiment (SPRITE) CubeSat mission led by Brian Fleming at the University of Colorado Boulder, and the Aspera mission led by Carlos Vargas at the University of Arizona. The mirrors for SPRITE and Aspera have reflective coatings that utilize aluminum protected by lithium fluoride using a novel PVD processes developed at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and an additional very thin top coating of magnesium fluoride deposited via ALD.
Team member John Hennessy prepares to load a sample wafer in the ALD coating chamber at JPL. Image Credit: NASA JPL The use of lithium fluoride enables SPRITE and Aspera to “see” further into the UV than other missions like NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, which uses only magnesium fluoride to protect its aluminum mirror surfaces. However, a drawback of lithium fluoride is its sensitivity to moisture, which in some cases can cause the performance of these mirror coatings to degrade on the ground prior to launch. To circumvent this issue, very thin layers (~1.5 nanometers) of magnesium fluoride were deposited by ALD on top of the lithium fluoride on the SPRITE and Aspera mirrors. The magnesium fluoride layers are thin enough to not strongly impact the performance of the mirror at the shortest wavelengths, but thick enough to enhance the stability against humidity during ground phases of the missions. Similar approaches are being considered for the mirror coatings of the future NASA flagship Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO).
Multilayer structures of aluminum and metal fluorides can also function as bandpass filters (filters that allow only signals within a selected range of wavelengths to pass through to be recorded) in the UV. Here, ALD is an attractive option due to the inherent repeatability and precise thickness control of the process. There is currently no suitable ALD process to deposit aluminum, and so additional work by the JPL team has explored the development of a custom vacuum coating chamber that combines the PVD aluminum and ALD fluoride processes described above. This system has been used to develop UV bandpass filters that can be deposited directly onto imaging sensors like silicon (Si) CCDs. These coatings can enable such sensors to operate with high UV efficiency, but low sensitivity to longer wavelength visible photons that would otherwise add background noise to the UV observations.
Structures composed of multilayer aluminum and metal fluoride coatings have recently been delivered as part of a UV camera to the Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat (SPARCS) mission led by Evgenya Shkolnik at Arizona State University. The JPL-developed camera incorporates a delta-doped Si CCD with the ALD/PVD filter coating on the far ultraviolet channel, yielding a sensor with high efficiency in a band centered near 160 nm with low response to out-of-band light.
A prototype of a back-illuminated CCD incorporating a multi-layer metal-dielectric bandpass filter coating deposited by a combination of thermal evaporation and ALD. This coating combined with JPL back surface passivation approaches enable the Si CCD to operate with high UV efficiency while rejecting longer wavelength light. Image credit: NASA JPL Next, the JPL team that developed these coating processes plans to focus on implementing a similar bandpass filter on an array of larger-format Si Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) sensors for the recently selected NASA Medium-Class Explorer (MIDEX) UltraViolet EXplorer (UVEX) mission led by Fiona Harrison at the California Institute of Technology, which is targeted to launch in the early 2030s.
For additional details, see the entry for this project on NASA TechPort
Project Lead: Dr. John Hennessy, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
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Last Updated Mar 18, 2025 Related Terms
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