Blog

The past few weeks have been exciting ones for Perseverance’s science team. At the “Enchanted Lake” site, we took our first look at what appear to be some of the bottommost sedimentary layers that make up the Jezero crater delta. Since then, we’ve re-traced our steps back towards “Three Forks” and have begun the ascent of the delta near “Hawksbill Gap.” It’s along this Hawksbill Gap route wh...

Perseverance was on the move this past week after finishing up remote science activities at Enchanted Lake, an exposure of finely layered rocks that may represent some of the lowest deposits of the delta. The rover threaded its way east around large sandy dune ripples before heading north enroute to Hawksbill Gap, where the team hopes to collect our first set of delta samples and eventually asc...

One of the prime objectives of the Perseverance mission is to collect a diverse cache of rock samples for eventual return to Earth. Among the highest priority rocks to sample are those that make up the well-preserved delta located on the western side of Jezero crater. This delta was one of the key attributes that made this landing site so appealing for the search for ancient Martian life. Close...

This week on Mars, Perseverance officially began the “Delta Front Campaign.” This second campaign of the mission commenced on April 18th, 2022, the 415th sol since landing. Each campaign represents a sub-portion of the Mars 2020 mission and is dedicated to exploring a distinct region, drilling designated sets of cores for possible future return to Earth, and taking numerous in situ science obse...

We made it! Perseverance is at the delta, and gracing us with stunning images to pour over. Mars 2020 is officially out of “Rapid Traverse” mode, where we put the pedal to the metal and focused on driving. This week, we are back to standard operations, and the team is beginning our Delta Front Campaign. You can check out last week’s blog for details on why exploring the delta is so exciting....

Last week’s blog talked about the rapid traverse of Perseverance to the Delta. This weeks blog entry will talk about the Delta itself, and why it is something worth rapidly traversing towards! The prospect of the delta for me is that every day will be full of excitement and could bring anything. Let me explain that a bit further. On a space mission like M2020 you get used an exciting timelin...

Drilling is on hold while the rover focuses on driving, so the sampling team is off studying the data we have acquired so far.  What kind of information do we get from the drill, and how do the rocks we have drilled so far compare to each other?  One of the first things we look at is how difficult it was for the drill to make progress through the rock.  The rover has a rotary percussive dril...

Perseverance is in a drive campaign going faster than any previous rover. How fast, you may ask? Its actual speed is just under a tenth of a mile per hour, but it’s faster than its predecessors. It is making comparatively rapid progress by devoting several hours per day to driving on very smooth terrain. That has allowed Perseverance to break previous rovers’ records for the distance traveled i...

Perseverance has spent a little over one Earth year in Jezero crater. In the last week, the team reached a very special milestone as we officially completed our first science campaign focused on the Jezero crater floor. During our crater floor campaign, we kept Perseverance busy! As we learned more about our surroundings, we characterized the rocks that make up the crater floor into two form...

Perseverance is adding a pop of color to Mars’ regular repertoire: purple. The color palette of Mars’ surface is one of muted hues. Burnt orange tones reflect the iron-bearing minerals that have rusted under an oxidizing atmosphere while soft greys characterize the un-rusted parent rock. However, over the past year we have seen prominent patches of purple peppered atop the rocks. The patc...