NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover arrived at the red planet in February 2021. Since then, the rover has been driving around the floor and river delta of Jezero Crater, searching for signs of ancient microbial life and collecting surface samples for the upcoming Mars Sample Return mission.
With its initial investigation of Jezero’s floor and delta complete, Perseverance is now beginning a several-month-long climb up the western rim of the crater. Along the route, the rover will likely face some of the most challenging and steepest terrain it has seen to date. The climb began on Aug. 19 and will mark the beginning of the fifth science campaign — named the “Crater Rim Campaign” — of Perseverance’s mission.
When Perseverance was investigating Jezero’s ancient river delta, the rover collected the only sedimentary rock ever sampled from a planet other than Earth. Sedimentary rocks are important to Perseverance’s mission because they form when particles of varying sizes are transported by flowing water and deposited into a separate body of standing water. The presence of sedimentary rock on Mars further confirms that Mars once had liquid water and continues to support the idea that ancient life may have once existed on the planet.
Image of Jezero’s crater rim taken by Persevereance’s Mastcam-Z instrument. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS)
A recent study, published on Aug. 14 in AGU Advances, details the 10 sedimentary sock samples collected by Perseverance in Jezero’s river delta, which extends into the crater in the shape of a fan. Samples collected at the front of the fan were found to be the oldest, and the samples collected at the top of the fan were found to (likely) be the youngest.
“Among these rock cores are likely the oldest materials sampled from any known environment that was potentially habitable. 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,” said geobiologist and Perseverance science team member Tanja Bosak of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Massachusetts.
With the river delta science campaign complete, Perseverance’s team began preparing for the rover’s fifth and most complex science campaign, the Crater Rim Campaign. While the samples collected at the rover delta are certainly intriguing, the science team believes samples collected at the crater rim will provide scientists with even more insight into Mars’ past geologic history.
“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. 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,” said Eleni Ravanis, a scientist on Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z instrument team and one of the Crater Rim Campaign science leads from the University of Hawaiì at Mānoa.
Image from one of Perseverance’s navigation cameras showing the rover leaving the “Bright Angel” region with the crater rim in the background. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
At the top of the crater rim are two “priority regions” that Perseverance’s science team wants to investigate. The two regions are named “Pico Turquino” and “Witch Hazel Hill,” and data from several of NASA’s Mars orbiters suggests that Pico Turquino may contain ancient fractures that could have been caused by past hydrothermal activity.
What’s more, orbital data of Witch Hazel suggests the presence of layered materials that were likely present when Mars’ climate was very different from what it is now. Interestingly, the light-toned bedrock at Witch Hazel is similar to the rock found at “Bright Angel,” a region where Perseverance recently sampled and investigated the “Cheyava Falls” rock. Cheyava Falls exhibits chemical structures and signatures that were possibly formed by life billions of years ago when there was flowing water in Jezero.
As mentioned, getting to the top of the crater rim will not be an easy task for the rover, with slopes as steep as 23 degrees and 300 meters of elevation gain expected. Along its journey to the top, Perseverance will have to rely on its auto-navigation capabilities as it drives along a pre-determined route designed by rover planners to minimize hazards and maximize science. When the rover summits the crater rim, it will arrive at a location named “Aurora Park” by Perseverance’s science team.
The route Perseverance will take to reach the top of the crater rim. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)
Once at Aurora Park, Perseverance will be perched hundreds of meters above Jezero and able to observe the full scale of the crater, which at its largest spans approximately 45 kilometers across. After admiring the view, the rover will take off to one of the two aforementioned locations and officially begin its fifth science campaign.
“Perseverance has completed four science campaigns, collected 22 rock cores, and traveled over 18 unpaved miles. 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,” said Art Thompson, Perseverance project manager of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
(Lead image: Perseverance takes a selfie with the Cheryava Falls rock. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
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