On December tenth, after practically 4 years on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover reached the rim of Jezero Crater. From a spot on the rim dubbed “Lookout Hill,” its view stretched so far as 60 kilometers (40 miles) throughout the Martian floor. The rim crest additionally marks a geologic transition from rocks that fell contained in the crater after it fashioned 3.9 billion years in the past to rocks thrown exterior the crater by the impression and a brand new area for the rover to discover.  

Proof {that a} lake fashioned within the crater ground after the impression made Jezero a tantalizing place to seek for indicators that the early Martian surroundings may need been capable of assist life — the mission’s prime precedence. The staff’s geologists additionally wished to research the traditional Martian crust, so that they navigated Perseverance up the crater wall to a website from which the rover may entry the traditional rocks they hoped to search out on the outer fringe of the rim.

Perseverance landed close to a broad fan of sediment inside Jezero on February 18, 2021, and commenced a sequence of 4 scientific campaigns inspecting totally different areas that had been inundated with water 3.7 billion years in the past. The final of those examined a website referred to as “Cheyava Falls,” the place the delta’s rocks confirmed indicators of moist chemical reactions thought of potential biosignatures. The rover collected samples there, and elsewhere, that NASA hopes may very well be retrieved by a later mission and dropped at Earth for extra exhaustive evaluation.

Climbing to the Rim

With its samples of Cheyava Falls safely stowed, Perseverance set off uphill towards the rim in August, searching for what is likely to be the oldest rocks on Mars.

“The brand new marketing campaign brings us fully new scientific riches as Perseverance roves into basically new geology,” says mission scientist Ken Farley (Caltech). For instance, the rover noticed one thing completely new within the “Pico Turquino Hills” en path to the rim. Sensible white cobbles have been seen scattered throughout a wider space coated with a various sampling of different volcanic rocks. They have been cantaloupe-size chunks of pure-white quartz, a mineral by no means earlier than seen on the Martian floor by satellites or earlier landers.  

On Earth, quartz can kind when water seeping by means of sizzling rock dissolves silicon, which crystalizes as quartz after the water evaporates. It’s the form of hydrothermal surroundings that might have supported life, if any existed on the Purple Planet billions of years in the past. The cobbles have been too small for Perseverance to pattern with its drill and stash for sending again to Earth, however Farley hopes to search out bigger exposures of quartz in locations later within the mission.

As Justin Maki (NASA) informed a press convention on the annual assembly of the American Geophysical Union in Washington on December twelfth, the 3½-month climb from the crater ground to Lookout Hill concerned an ascend of 500 meters (1,640 ft). Perseverance tackled grades of as much as 20% and a number of the hardest terrain it has but coated. The tough terrain challenged rover drivers, and the rover slipped in some locations. However Maki pronounced Perseverance to be “in good well being.”

The following cease will probably be at an outcrop referred to as “Witch Hazel Hill” about 450 meters (1,500 ft (450 meters) away. Plans name for the rover to spend six months there finding out an outcrop exposing greater than 100 meters (330 ft) of layered construction. “As geologists, we love layered outcrops, every of which is sort of a web page within the guide of Martian historical past,” mentioned Candice Bedford (Purdue).

Two extra stops already are scheduled. The primary will begin with a steep descent and canopy about 3 km (2 miles) to “Lac de Charmes,” an space on the plains past the crater rim which have been much less affected by the impression that gouged out Jezero. The second would require one other trek of 1½ km (1 mile) to research a megabreccia, an outcrop of huge boulders. Scientists assume this is likely to be Martian bedrock shattered by an unlimited impression 3.9 billion years in the past that created the area’s 1,200-km-wide (745-mile) Isidis basin.

Perseverance has already collected and cached 25 samples for return to Earth, together with 13 extra tubes obtainable for future samples. NASA says it should full revising plans for its problem-plagued sample-return mission in 2025.