The road ahead will be even more
scientifically intriguing, and probably somewhat easier-going, now that the
six-wheeler has completed its long climb to the top.
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has
crested the top of Jezero Crater’s rim at a location the science team calls
“Lookout Hill” and rolling toward its first science stop after the monthslong
climb. The rover made the ascent in order to explore a region of Mars unlike
anywhere it has investigated before.
Taking about 3½ months and ascending
1,640 vertical feet (500 vertical meters), the rover climbed 20% grades, making
stops along the way for science observations. Perseverance’s science team
shared some of their work and future plans at a media briefing held Thursday,
Dec. 12, in Washington at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting, the
country’s largest gathering of Earth and space scientists.
“During the Jezero Crater rim climb, our rover drivers have done an amazing job negotiating some of the toughest terrain we’ve encountered since landing,” said Steven Lee, deputy project manager for Perseverance at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “They developed innovative approaches to overcome these challenges — even tried driving backward to see if it would help — and the rover has come through it all like a champ. Perseverance is ‘go’ for everything the science team wants to throw at it during this next science campaign.”
A scan across a panorama captured by NASA’s
Perseverance Mars rover shows the steepness of the terrain leading to the rim
of Jezero Crater. The rover’s Mastcam-Z camera system took the images that make
up this view on Dec. 5. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
Since landing at Jezero in February 2021, Perseverance has completed four science campaigns: the “Crater Floor,” “Fan Front,” “Upper Fan,” and “Margin
Unit.” The science
team is calling Perseverance’s fifth campaign the “Northern Rim” because its
route covers the northern part of the southwestern section of Jezero’s rim.
Over the first year of the Northern Rim campaign, the rover is expected to
visit as many as four sites of geologic interest, take several samples, and
drive about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers).
“The Northern Rim campaign brings us completely new scientific riches as Perseverance roves into fundamentally new geology,” said Ken Farley, project scientist for Perseverance at Caltech in Pasadena. “It marks our transition from rocks that partially filled Jezero Crater when it was formed by a massive impact about 3.9 billion years ago to rocks from deep down inside Mars that were thrown upward to form the crater rim after impact.”
This animation shows the position of NASA’s
Perseverance Mars rover as of Dec. 4, 2024, the 1,347th Martian day, or sol, of
the mission, along with the proposed route of the mission’s fifth science
campaign, dubbed Northern Rim, over the next several years.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/University of Arizona
“These rocks represent pieces of
early Martian crust and are among the oldest rocks found anywhere in the solar
system. Investigating them could help us understand what Mars — and our own
planet — may have looked like in the beginning,” Farley added.
First Stop:
‘Witch Hazel Hill’
With Lookout Hill in its rearview
mirror, Perseverance is headed to a scientifically significant rocky outcrop
about 1,500 feet (450 meters) down the other side of the rim that the science
team calls “Witch Hazel Hill.”
“The campaign starts off with a
bang because Witch Hazel Hill represents over 330 feet of layered outcrop,
where each layer is like a page in the book of Martian history. As we drive
down the hill, we will be going back in time, investigating the ancient
environments of Mars recorded in the crater rim,” said Candice Bedford, a
Perseverance scientist from Purdue University in West Layfette, Indiana. “Then,
after a steep descent, we take our first turns of the wheel away from the
crater rim toward ‘Lac de Charmes,’ about 2 miles south.”
Lac de Charmes intrigues the
science team because, being located on the plains beyond the rim, it is less
likely to have been significantly affected by the formation of Jezero Crater.
After leaving Lac de Charmes, the
rover will traverse about a mile (1.6 kilometers) back to the rim to
investigate a stunning outcrop of large blocks known as megabreccia. These
blocks may represent ancient bedrock broken up during the Isidis
impact, a
planet-altering event that likely excavated deep into the Martian crust as it
created an impact basin some 745 miles (1,200 kilometers) wide, 3.9 billion
years in the past.
More About
Perseverance
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: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance
Source: NASA’s Perseverance Rover Reaches Top of Jezero Crater Rim - NASA
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