Blog

Mars clouds are very much like Earth’s cirrus clouds but thinner. While Earth clouds can contain liquid water, the low temperatures and pressures on Mars only allow for water-ice (and CO2 ice) clouds to form. However, these water-ice clouds are optically thin because of the low amounts of water present in the Martian atmosphere; if all the water were on the surface, it would make a layer thinne...

What do the Perseverance rover and Superman have in common? They both can “see” through solid rock! Superman has X-ray vision whereas Perseverance has RIMFAX, a ground penetrating radar or GPR, located on the lower rear of the rover. RIMFAX uses radio waves to image the subsurface rock layers as the rover drives along. It is the first instrument of its kind sent by NASA to Mars and can “see” do...

Happy one Martian year at Jezero! Perseverance and the team recently celebrated one Mars year (668 sols or 687 Earth days) on the Red Planet while continuing to offload some of our sample tubes at the “Three Forks” depot location. The celebration also marked the end of our prime mission at Jezero as we transition into our extended mission phase and set our sights on the delta top. It has be...

What do you see in the picture above - an abandoned lightsaber dropped by a Jedi Knight, lying forgotten amidst the Tattoine sand? It may look like a scene straight out of Star Wars, but sometimes life imitates art. The apparent “lightsaber” is actually an ~18 cm (~7 in) long sample tube holding a rock core drilled by NASA’s Perseverance rover, collected from Jezero Crater, Mars, for potential ...

Perseverance has a unique device near its heart that inhales Mars’ atmosphere and exhales pure oxygen. This device is named MOXIE, the Mars Oxygen In Situ Resource Utilization Experiment. The toaster-sized MOXIE uses a high-temperature, electrochemical process called solid oxide electrolysis to strip oxygen ions from the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mars. There are two little gas exit po...

Recently a combination of instruments on the Perseverance rover has experienced a dust devil in a new way. The SuperCam Microphone recorded the sound of a dust devil while the navigation camera snapped pictures and the MEDA environmental station measured the drop in pressure as the dust devil passed over rover. The recording even catches the sound of dust grains hitting the rover. The results w...

The Perseverance rover recently collected its first two samples of Martian regolith!  Regolith is dust and broken rock, and collecting it requires a different approach than collecting rock cores. To start with, regolith sampling uses a different bit than rock sampling.  The back of the regolith bit is very similar to a coring bit – it uses the same type of sample tube and interfaces with the...

After scraping away the top few layers of stone using its abrading bit, the Perseverance rover has revealed a network of thin, white veins. Could these hold clues about ancient life? Geological veins are mineral deposits that form when a pre-existing fracture within a rock is filled with a new mineral. They are exciting to planetary scientists because they often provide evidence of past wate...

From the image Perseverance recently took at Yori Pass, we can see that there are gray rocks scattered on top of a tan colored rock surface below. What do these different colors tell us? As planetary geologists, our job is to figure out through physical and chemical observations the story that these rocks tell us about Yori Pass and its place within the delta in Jezero Crater. Color is one of t...

After spending over 600 sols (days on Mars) exploring the diverse geologic environment of Jezero Crater, collecting drilled rock cores (and one atmospheric sample) along the way, Perseverance recently spent some time parked near a large sand ripple named “Observation Mountain,” with sights set on something widespread yet unique. Regolith is the sandy, dusty, loose material covering much of the ...