Here’s what’s next for NASA’s persistent Mars rover

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The persistent rover is preparing to dig up some Martian rock, and mission scientists have seen evidence of ancient flash floods at the bottom of the dry lake where the rover landed. NASA shared these updates and more during a press conference today at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Perseverance landed on Mars in February, and its science mission officially began in June, after operational checks on its instruments and historic flights by the Ingenuity helicopter. Perseverance is tasked with exploring Mars’ Jezero Crater, the site of a former lake that NASA scientists hope will contain fossilized evidence of Martian life. So far, Perseverance has traveled nearly a kilometer (0.62 miles), photographing the intriguing rock formations along the way. These formations shed light on the geological history of the Red Planet, and some are promising sites for investigating biosignatures (evidence of life), which researchers speculate may look like stratolites encased in ancient rocks on Earth. Eventually, the rock samples collected by the probe will be taken by another mission and brought back to Earth – the first materials to be recovered from Mars.

Perseverance was going near Martian Séítah, a dangerous stretch of sand dunes on which a vehicle could easily get stuck. The significant improvement in the vehicle’s AI system means the rover can think about where it’s going next while driving, said Olivier Tobet, rover’s augmented navigation team leader, a big step beyond the cruising system. of previous touring vehicles.

All along, Perseverance has been conducting technology demonstrations that will inform future missions. Another offering besides creativity was MOXIE, where perseverance produced a small amount of oxygen on Mars, which had enormous implications for human extraterrestrial ambitions. “This experiment advances to these future missions where we want to extract oxygen, which we want to use for human astronauts to breathe and even launch vehicles,” said Jennifer Trosper, director of the Perseverance Project, during today’s press conference.

The view from one of Perseverance’s navigation cameras as the rover performs its longest autonomous driving distance to date (358 feet) on July 1, 2021.

The rover’s final destination is called the Three Forks, which delineate a dry river delta set off from Jezero. On the way, you’ll visit several points of interest, including Crater Floor Fractured Rough, the first sample site. NASA isn’t sure if the broken ore is igneous or sedimentary, and the answer will tell scientists how Jezero formed and what clues about life it might contain. Perseverance scientists anticipate that the bottom of the lake will contain some of the oldest rocks that the rover will have a chance to look at before heading into the river delta.

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“One of the hypotheses we’re trying to test is that the lake that once filled Jezero was not just there once, but it went through multiple periods of fullness, drying up, and filling again,” said Ken Farley, a perseverance project scientist at Caltech. Press conference. “This is very important because it means that we will have multiple time periods where we can learn about environmental conditions on Mars, and we have multiple time periods where we can look for ancient life that might have been on a planet.”

Farley said images taken by Perseverance indicate that ancient Jezero Lake had different water levels at different times, and that scientists have seen evidence that ancient floods moved large boulders across the delta. One of the greatest points of interest so far on the mission is a rocky outcrop south of the probe’s landing site nicknamed Artube, after a river in southern France. Artuby appears to be fossilized Martian clay, which is exactly the kind of stagnant, undisturbed material from the ancient lake that NASA wants to investigate.

For sampling, the rover will first scrape the surface of the rocks to clean it of any hidden elements, such as Martian dust. The rover then extracts core from the rocks and seals it in a sampling tube inside the rover’s abdomen. This tube will eventually be included in a sample bunker that, if all goes well in the next decade, will be brought to Earth by another spacecraft.

“A lot of what we’ve been doing lately on the ground as well as on the car is preparing for that first sample,” Trosper said. “We’re ready to take samples… We expect to have that first sample within the first few weeks of August.”

While Perseverance has not yet sampled any rock, it did process one of the Five Witness tubes. Witness tubes are similar to sample tubes, but they contain materials that detect contaminants. Witness tubes are opened and closed to sample the local Martian environment before any rock is extracted, so that when all tubes are returned to Earth, NASA scientists will know if there are any ground contaminations while collecting samples. There are another 38 tubes set up for sampling – this is 38 opportunities for us Earthlings to see what Mars is made of, how the planet has changed, and what, if anything, lived there once.

Finally, the upcoming Perseverance project is very ambitious. The samples are expected to reach Earth by the early 2030s, said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA.

More:NASA’s Perseverance rover is finally beginning to hit the road on Mars

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