NASA The latest rover is beginning to study the ground of an ancient crater that once had a lake, after weeks of NASA's Perseverance rover that has been busy serving as communications for the Intent Mars Helicopter base station and record the historic flight of the rotorcraft . But it has also been busy placing its scientific instruments on the ground rocks of Jezero Crater.
The Perseverance rover's findings will help scientists build a timeline of when the ancient lakes there formed, when they dried up, and when sediments began to accumulate in deltas that formed long ago in the crater. Knowing this timeline should help date rock samples that may even hold records of ancient microbes. The rocks were captured in detail by a camera called Watson at the end of the
rover's robotic arm. A pair of zoom cameras that make up the Mastcam-Z imager of the rover's "head" also surveyed the terrain. A laser instrument called SuperCam scanned some of the rocks to detect their chemical composition. These and other instruments allow scientists to learn more about Jezero Crater and to locate areas they may want to study more deeply. An important question that
scientists want to answer is: Are these rocks sedimentary rocks (such as sandstone ) or igneous rocks (formed by volcanic activity ). Each type of rock tells a different story. Some sedimentary rocks—formed in the presence of water from rock and mineral fragments such as sand, silt, and clay—are better suited for preserving biological features, or signs of past life. Igneous rocks, on the other hand, are more precise geological clocks, allowing scientists to create a precise timeline of how a region formed.
A complicating factor is that the rock around Perseverance has been eroded by wind over time and covered with younger sand and dust . On Earth, geologists might trek into the wild to unwrap rock samples to better understand their origins. But doing that on Mars is very difficult,
While Perseverance doesn't have a rock hammer, it has other ways to peek through millennia-old dust. When scientists find a particularly tantalizing sample, they can extend the rover's arm and use a grinder to smooth the surface of the rock, revealing its internal structure and composition. Once they've done that, the team uses arm instruments called PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Rock Chemistry) and SHERLOC (Scans Habitable Environments for Organics and Chemicals with Raman and Luminescence) to collect more detailed Chemical and mineralogical information. The
team can finally collect better samples with the drill on the rover's arm. The best samples will be stored in special tubes and stored in a sample bank sent back to Earth's surface for eventual return to Earth.
A key objective of the Perseverance mission on Mars is astrobiology , including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The probe will characterize the planet's geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and store Martian rocks and regenerated rocks (crushed and dust).
The subsequent NASA mission will work with ESA ( European Space Agency ) to send the spacecraft to Mars , collect these sealed samples from the surface of Mars, and send them back to Earth for in-depth analysis.
Caltech in Pasadena, California builds and manages the operations of the Perseverance rover for JPL managed by NASA.
