NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover. ApThis image of Perseverance’s backshell sitting upright on the surface of Jezero Crater was collected from an altitude of 26 feet (8 meters) by NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during its 26 th flight at Mars on April 19, 2022. The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA, would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith. 3 Confirmation that the rover successfully landed on Mars was received on February 18, 2021, at 20. It was manufactured by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and launched on July 30, 2020, at 11:50 UTC. No need to hike up there to see – let the river do the work!” More About the MissionĪ key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. Perseverance, nicknamed Percy, 2 is a car -sized Mars rover designed to explore the Jezero crater on Mars as part of NASA s Mars 2020 mission. Prospectors looking for gold or diamonds in the old days often looked in rivers to determine whether there was any deposit of interest upstream. “Whether the boulders appear intriguing enough for closer examination and possible sampling remains to be seen – literally,” said Farley. So the team will be keeping their options open, ready to stop for anything that piques their curiosity. Boulders are also desirable because their large surface area allows scientists to visually investigate many potentially distinct rocks in a single image. With this sample sealed and stored in its belly, the rover is on its way to a low ridge called “Snowdrift Peak.” To get there, it will have to cross a field of boulders.Īs with the rock fragments in the Otis Peak sample, scientists believe the boulders likely formed elsewhere and were transported to their present location billions of years ago by an ancient river. Now in its third science campaign, Perseverance is exploring the top of a fan-shaped pile of sedimentary rock that stands 130 feet (40 meters) tall. Scientists will be able to look at each pebble and fragment in this core, dubbed “Otis Peak,” to determine details such as its age, what the environmental conditions were like in the river when the conglomerate formed, and whether it contains signs of ancient microbial life.

Perseverance is collecting these samples so that they can be brought to Earth by the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Mars Sample Return campaign and studied by lab equipment that’s too large and complex to bring to Mars.

Nasa images from perseverance