Blog

Even before the end of Ingenuity’s primary mission as a technology demonstrator, the helicopter showed that it could provide tactical and scientific scouting for the Perseverance mission. In practice, this hasn’t always been possible, but Ingenuity has indeed proven its worth on more than a few occasions over the course of the mission. As mentioned in a previous post, the team was looking forwa...

The Perseverance rover has been exploring the top of the Western fan in Jezero crater for some time now, but new observations never fail to offer new insights. Sitting at the edge of Belva crater on top of the fan, Perseverance has been investigating sediments that were transported to their location via the ancient streams that flowed into Jezero. Each unique rock, boulder, or sediment that the...

When it comes to searching for clues about Mars’ geologic past and present, SHERLOC and WATSON are on the case! SHERLOC stands for Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals, and WATSON stands for Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering. SHERLOC and WATSON both sit at the end of Perseverance’s robotic arm, and their names pay homa...

This past week, the Perseverance rover has driven to a rock outcrop called Echo Creek, situating itself just west of the Belva crater rim peppered with large flagstone rocks suitable for its next task: abrasion. Although successfully executed countless times over the past two years, abrading and sampling are still non-deterministic activities. Rocks may fracture or reorient during preload ap...

After our exploration of a boulder field last week, Perseverance is continuing the Upper Fan campaign. We have driven to Echo Creek, from which we also have a view of Belva Crater. Along our journey, we have seen many interesting rocks. These include a lumpy rock that the team named “Blueberry Island”, seen in the above Mastcam-Z image (Sol 765). This rock may be a conglomerate (sedimentary)...

This past week, Perseverance has been exploring the top of the western fan in Jezero crater. Scientists have been waiting a long time to examine, up close, one of the terrains observed in this area: boulder fields. Why are researchers so interested in a random assortment of rocks? Being on top of the fan, at one time in Mars’ history there were rivers flowing across this area that built the ...

After spending over 700 sols (Martian days) exploring the crater floor and delta front, Perseverance is making tracks up the front of the Jezero fan, climbing across stratigraphic layers, up and out of the ancient Jezero lakebed. This ascent begins the extended portion of the Mars 2020 mission, where Perseverance will continue on to the rim of Jezero Crater and beyond, collecting samples along ...

NASA’s Perseverance rover is now exploring the upper surface of the Western Fan in Jezero crater, having completed a very successful one Mars year Prime Mission. It has sealed 22 of the 43 sample tubes it brought to Mars and created the Three Forks Sample Depot where it deposited 10 of these samples. The Mars Sample Return mission aims to bring some of the samples that Perseverance collects ...

MOXIE, the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, is a Perseverance Rover payload on Mars. MOXIE uses a scroll pump to capture the thin, carbon-dioxide dominate air of Mars and flows it into a Solid Oxide Electrolysis (SOXE) stack. The SOXE performs an electrochemical process that strips oxygen atoms off the carbon dioxide. This oxygen is a valuable resource for rocket propellant ...

Over the past several weeks, Perseverance has traveled up Jezero’s western fan and has begun exploring its upper surface, a potential treasure-trove of information about the river systems that flowed into the crater and the rocks they may have brought in from other areas! After dropping off our first sample depot at Three Forks, we began to explore further up the fan then we had ever been be...