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By NASA
Mars: Perseverance (Mars 2020) 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 The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 2 min read
Margin’ up the Crater Rim!
NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance conducts proximity science on the Eremita Mesa abrasion patch in the Margin Unit on Sept. 6, 2024, as it continues its traverse up the rim of Jezero Crater. Perseverance acquired the image using its Front Left Hazard Avoidance Camera A (Hazcam) on sol 1261 — Martian day 1,261 of the Mars 2020 mission — at the local mean solar time of 13:53:53. NASA/JPL-Caltech To conclude its exploration of the mysterious margin unit before it ascends the rim of Jezero Crater, Perseverance made one last stop this past week to investigate these strange rocks at “Eremita Mesa.”
Since beginning its steep drive up the crater rim, Perseverance has been traversing along the edge of the margin unit (the margin of the margin!), an enigmatic unit rich in carbonates, a mineral group closely linked to habitability. Here, the rover team scouted out a mound of rock called “Specter Chasm,” where Perseverance cleared away the dusty, weathered surface with its trusty abrading bit. The resulting abraded patch, called Eremita Mesa, is pictured above being investigated by Perseverance’s proximity science instruments mounted on its robotic arm. This includes taking close-up images to examine the millimeter-scale particles that make up the rock, using the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera, which functions as Perseverance’s magnifying glass.
Before the rover began exploring, investigations using orbital satellite data had suggested the margin unit rocks may have formed in several different ways. Theories the team has been exploring include that the unit formed on the shoreline of the ancient lake that once filled Jezero Crater, or instead that it was produced by volcanic processes such as pyroclastic flows or ashfall, or ancient lavas flowing into the crater. Since Perseverance began its investigation of the unit in September 2023, more than 350 sols ago (1 sol = 1 Mars day), the Science Team has been scouring data collected by the rover’s instruments to help constrain the unit’s origin. So far, this has remained largely a mystery, with the original rock textures potentially heavily affected by alteration since it formed more than 3 billion years ago. Perseverance has already collected three exciting samples of this curious rock unit for future Earth return: “Pelican Point,” “Lefroy Bay,” and “Comet Geyser,” and the team is hoping the data collected at Eremita Mesa could help further constrain the ancient processes on Mars that formed these strange rocks.
Next, it’s onwards and upwards for Perseverance as it faces a steep climb up the crater rim, where perhaps even more exotic and exciting rocks await!
Written by Alex Jones, Ph.D. student at Imperial College London
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Last Updated Sep 10, 2024 Related Terms
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Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited…
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By NASA
Mars: Perseverance (Mars 2020) 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 The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 3 min read
Perseverance Kicks off the Crater Rim Campaign!
Mastcam-Z mosaic made of 59 individual Mastcam-Z images showing the area Perseverance will climb in the coming weeks on its way to Dox Castle, the rover’s first stop on the crater rim. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS Perseverance is officially headed into a new phase of scientific investigation on the Jezero Crater rim!
For the last 2 months, the Perseverance rover has been exploring the Neretva Vallis region of Jezero Crater, where rocks with interesting popcorn-like textures and “leopard spot” patterns have fascinated us all. Now, the rover has begun its long ascent up the crater rim, and is officially kicking off a new phase of exploration for the mission.
Strategic (longer-term) planning is particularly important for the Mars 2020 mission given the crucial role Perseverance plays in collecting samples for Mars Sample Return, and the Mars 2020 team undertakes this planning in the form of campaigns. Perseverance has now completed four such campaigns— the Crater Floor, Delta Front, Upper Fan and Margin Unit campaigns respectively— making the Crater Rim Campaign next in line. Given its broad scope and the wide diversity of rocks we expect to encounter and sample along the way, it may be the most ambitious campaign the team has attempted so far.
The team also has less information from orbiter data to go on compared to previous campaigns, because this area of the crater rim does not have the high-resolution, hyperspectral imaging of CRISM that helped inform much of our geological unit distinctions inside the crater. This means that Mastcam-Z multispectral and SuperCam long-distance imaging will be particularly useful for understanding broadscale mineralogical distinctions between rocks as we traverse the crater rim. Such imaging has already proved extremely useful in the Neretva Vallis area, where at Alsap Butte we observed rocks that appeared similar to each other in initial imaging, but actually display an Andy-Warhol-esque array of color in multispectral products, indicative of varied mineral signatures.
Our next stop is Dox Castle where Perseverance will investigate the contact between the Margin Unit and the Crater rim, as well as rubbly material that may be our first encounter with deposits generated during the impact that created Jezero crater itself. Later in the campaign, we will investigate other light-toned outcrops that may or may not be similar to those encountered at Bright Angel, as well as rocks thought to be part of the regionally extensive olivine-carbonate-bearing unit, and whose relationship to both Séítah and the Margin Unit remains an interesting story to unravel. Throughout this next phase of exploration, comparing and contrasting the rocks we see on the rim to both each other and those previously explored in the mission will be an important part of our scientific investigations.
The whole Mars 2020 science team is incredibly excited to be embarking on the next phase of Perseverance’s adventure, and we expect these results, and the samples we collect along the way, to inform our understanding of not just Jezero itself, but the planet Mars as a whole. We can’t wait to share what we find!
Written by Eleni Ravanis, PhD Candidate and Graduate Research Assistant at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
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Last Updated Aug 27, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
This panorama shows the area NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover will climb in coming months to crest Jezero Crater’s rim. It is made up of 59 images taken by the rover’s Mastcam-Z on Aug. 4.NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS After 2½ years exploring Jezero Crater’s floor and river delta, the rover will ascend to an area where it will search for more discoveries that could rewrite Mars’ history.
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover will soon begin a monthslong ascent up the western rim of Jezero Crater that is likely to include some of the steepest and most challenging terrain the rover has encountered to date. Scheduled to start the week of Aug. 19, the climb will mark the kickoff of the mission’s new science campaign — its fifth since the rover landed in the crater on Feb. 18, 2021.
“Perseverance has completed four science campaigns, collected 22 rock cores, and traveled over 18 unpaved miles,” said Perseverance project manager Art Thompson of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “As we start the Crater Rim Campaign, our rover is in excellent condition, and the team is raring to see what’s on the roof of this place.”
Two of the priority regions the science team wants to study at the top of the crater are nicknamed “Pico Turquino” and “Witch Hazel Hill.” Imagery from NASA’s Mars orbiters indicates that Pico Turquino contains ancient fractures that may have been caused by hydrothermal activity in the distant past.
One of the navigation cameras aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover captured this view looking back at the “Bright Angel” area on July 30, the 1,224th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. NASA/JPL-Caltech Orbital views of Witch Hazel show layered materials that likely date from a time when Mars had a very different climate than today. Those views have revealed light-toned bedrock similar to what was found at “Bright Angel,” the area where Perseverance recently discovered and sampled the “Cheyava Falls” rock, which exhibits chemical signatures and structures that could possibly have been formed by life billions of years ago when the area contained running water.
It’s Sedimentary
During the river delta exploration phase of the mission, the rover collected the only sedimentary rock ever sampled from a planet other than Earth. Sedimentary rocks are important because they form when particles of various sizes are transported by water and deposited into a standing body of water; on Earth, liquid water is one of the most important requirements for life as we know it.
A study published Wednesday, Aug. 14, in AGU Advances chronicles the 10 rock cores gathered from sedimentary rocks in an ancient Martian delta, a fan-shaped collection of rocks and sediment that formed billions of years ago at the convergence of a river and a crater lake.
The core samples collected at the fan front are the oldest, whereas the rocks cored at the fan top are likely the youngest, produced when flowing water deposited sediment in the western fan.
“Among these rock cores are likely the oldest materials sampled from any known environment that was potentially habitable,” said Tanja Bosak, a geobiologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and member of Perseverance’s science team. “When we bring them back to Earth, they can tell us so much about when, why, and for how long Mars contained liquid water and whether some organic, prebiotic, and potentially even biological evolution may have taken place on that planet.”
This map shows the route NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover will take (in blue) as it climbs the western rim of Jezero Crater, first reaching “Dox Castle,” then investigating the “Pico Turquino” area before approaching “Witch Hazel Hill.” NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona Onward to the Crater Rim
As scientifically intriguing as the samples have been so far, the mission expects many more discoveries to come.
“Our samples are already an incredibly scientifically compelling collection, but the crater rim promises to provide even more samples that will have significant implications for our understanding of Martian geologic history,” said Eleni Ravanis, a University of Hawaiì at Mānoa scientist on Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z instrument team and one of the Crater Rim Campaign science leads. “This is because we expect to investigate rocks from the most ancient crust of Mars. These rocks formed from a wealth of different processes, and some represent potentially habitable ancient environments that have never been examined up close before.”
Reaching the top of the crater won’t be easy. To get there, Perseverance will rely on its auto-navigation capabilities as it follows a route that rover planners designed to minimize hazards while still giving the science team plenty to investigate. Encountering slopes of up to 23 degrees on the journey (rover drivers avoid terrain that would tilt Perseverance more than 30 degrees), the rover will have gained about 1,000 feet (300 meters) in elevation by the time it summits the crater’s rim at a location the science team has dubbed “Aurora Park.”
Then, perched hundreds of meters above a crater floor stretching 28 miles (45 kilometers) across, Perseverance can begin the next leg of its adventure.
More Mission Information
A key objective of Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, to help pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet and as 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 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, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more about Perseverance:
science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance
News Media Contacts
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
Alise Fisher / Erin Morton
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
alise.m.fisher@nasa.gov / erin.morton@nasa.gov
2024-107
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Last Updated Aug 14, 2024 Related Terms
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By USH
Researcher Jean Ward, while analyzing a Mars image acquired by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on March 2, 2010, discovered an unusual anomaly in Noachis Terra, a region of Mars north of Asimov, also known as the "Land of Noah."
Using Topaz Labs' Gigapixel to upscale the image for better detail, Ward observed the anomaly, measuring approximately 250 to 300 meters in length, resembles what looks like an artificially created structure with multiple right angles. Ward suggests it could outline a 'tanker-shaped' anomaly.
Some suggest that the anomaly could be part of an ancient road with a wall and might be part of a longer route that has been partially covered by landslides or other natural occurrences but others say that it is only the wall that stands out supporting the theory that it could be the upper part of an underground base built at/inside the rim of a crater.
Just imagine if it is an underground Mars base, the location would be suitable for UFOs to take off or land on landing pads inside the crater, which are connected to the base. This would not be the first time UFOs have been observed descending into or taking off from craters.
Whatever its origin, this anomaly does not appear to be a natural formation.
Topaz Labs' Gigapixel image. Original MRO image (CTX: B19_016868_1344_XN_45S355W). Jean Ward's video analyze of the anomaly.View the full article
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