In August 2021 on a lonely crater floor, the newest Mars rover dug into one of its first rocks.
The percussive drill attached to the arm of the Perseverance rover scraped the dust and top several millimeters off a rocky outcrop in a 5-centimeter-wide circle. From just above, one of the rover’s cameras captured what looked like broken shards wedged against one another. The presence of interlocking crystal textures became obvious. Those textures were not what most of the scientists who had spent years preparing for the mission expected.
Then the scientists watched on a video conference as the rover’s two spectrometers revealed the chemistry of those meshed textures. The visible shapes along with the chemical compositions showed that this rock, dubbed Rochette, was volcanic in origin. It was not made up of the layers of clay and silt that would be found at a former lake bed.
Nicknamed Percy, the rover arrived at the Jezero crater two years ago, on February 18, 2021, with its sidekick helicopter, Ingenuity. The most complex spacecraft to explore the Martian surface, Percy builds on the work of the Curiosity rover, which has been on Mars since 2012, the twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers, the Sojourner rover and other landers.
But Perseverance’s main purpose is different. While the earlier rovers focused on Martian geology and understanding the planet’s environment, Percy is looking for signs of past life. Jezero was picked for the Mars 2020 mission because it appears from orbit to be a former lake environment where microbes could have thrived, and its large delta would likely preserve any signs of them. Drilling, scraping and collecting pieces of the Red Planet, the rover is using its seven science instruments to analyze the bits for any hint of ancient life. It’s also collecting samples to return to Earth.
2023-02-17 11:00:00
Article from www.sciencenews.org
The last two years have been revolutionary for exploration of the red planet, Mars. In February 2021, NASA’s rover, Perseverance, was sent from Earth to explore the surface of the Martian world. The rover and the scientific instruments it has been carrying, have made a number of incredible discoveries in just a short span of time.
In June 2021, Perseverance made its first exciting discovery while mapping the area around the Jezero Crater. The rover unexpectedly came across a large trove of clay minerals. Clay minerals form in the presence of liquid water, a key component to support life as we know it. This discovery has meant that conditions could have been favourable for supporting microbial life millions of years ago, when the crater would have had a lake filled with water.
Perseverance has also made interesting findings regarding the chemical composition of the Martian atmosphere. In particular, the rover has detected the presence of methane, a gas produced by living organisms on Earth. The detection of methane on Mars is a crucial, albeit preliminary, indication of biological activity on Mars.
The discoveries made by Perseverance have been made possible by its sophisticated array of specialized scientific instruments. Among its most useful instruments, the laser-based system called SuperCam is capable of day and night analysis of the minerals and elements which make up the Martian surface. It has also been used to provide detailed images of the terrain this far away planet. Further, the rover’s Mastcam-Z camera system is capable of taking high-resolution, 3D video and 3D images of the planet surface.
This is just the beginning of many exciting discoveries made by NASA’s long-serving unmanned rover, Perseverance. With two years of exploration and research, Perseverance and its scientific instrumentation will continue to expand our knowledge, and better the collective understanding, of this mysterious planet, Mars.