After nearly five years on Mars, NASA's Perseverance rover has traveled nearly 25 miles (40 kilometers), and the mission team has been busy testing the rover's durability and collecting new science data en route to a new region called Lac des Charmes, where it will search for rocks to sample next year.
Like its predecessor Curiositywhich has been exploring another region of Mars since 2012, Perseverance was made for a long time. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which built Perseverance and is leading the mission, continues to test parts of the rover here on Earth to ensure the six-wheeled scientist will last for years to come. Last summer, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed that the rotary actuators that turn the rover's wheels could operate optimally for at least another 37 miles (60 kilometers); similar brake tests are also carried out.
Over the past two years, engineers have carefully assessed almost all of the car's subsystems in this way and concluded that they will be able to operate until at least 2031.
“These tests show that the rover is in excellent shape,” said Perseverance deputy project manager Steve Lee of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who presented the results Wednesday at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, the largest gathering of planetary scientists in the United States. “All systems are fully capable of supporting a very long-term mission to broadly explore this fascinating region of Mars.”
Perseverance traveled through Mars' Jezero Crater, the site of an ancient lake-river system, where it collected scientifically compelling rock core samples. In fact, in September the team announced that a rock sample called “Cheyawa Falls” contained potential imprint of past microbial life.
In addition to the impressive set six scientific instrumentsPerseverance has more autonomous capabilities than previous rovers. A paper recently published in IEEE Transactions on Field Robotics highlights an autonomous planning tool called Enhanced Autonomous Navigation, or ENav. The software scans for potential hazards up to 50 feet (15 meters) away, then chooses a path clear of obstacles and tells Perseverance's wheels how to go there.
JPL engineers carefully plan each day for the rover's work on Mars. But once the rover starts moving, it has to operate on its own, and sometimes has to react to unexpected obstacles in the terrain. Previous rovers could do this to some extent, but not if these obstacles were clustered next to each other. They also were unable to react in advance, causing vehicles to move more slowly when approaching sand pits, rocks and ledges. In contrast, the ENav algorithm evaluates each rover wheel regardless of terrain elevation, trade-offs between different routes, and “entry” or “entry” zones marked by human operators for the path ahead.
“More than 90% of Perseverance’s journey was based on autonomous driving, allowing for the rapid collection of a wide variety of samples,” said JPL autonomy researcher Hiro Ono, lead author of the paper. “As humans go to the Moon and even Mars in the future, long-range autonomous driving will become more important for exploring these worlds.”
A paper published Wednesday in the journal Science, details what Perseverance discovered in the “Marginal Region,” a geological area on the outskirts, or inner edge, of Jezero Crater. The rover collected three samples from this region. Scientists believe these samples could be particularly useful in demonstrating how ancient rocks from the depths of Mars interacted with water and the atmosphere to help create conditions favorable to life.
From September 2023 to November 2024, Perseverance climbed 1,312 feet (400 meters) from the Margin Unit, studying rocks along the way, especially those containing the mineral olivine. Scientists use minerals as timekeepers because the crystals inside them can record details about the exact moment and conditions in which they formed.
Jezero Crater and its surrounding area contain large reserves of olivine, which forms at high temperatures, usually deep inside the planet, and provide clues to what happens inside the planet. Scientists believe Margin Unit olivine was formed by emplacement, a process in which magma penetrates underground layers and cools to become igneous rock. In this case, erosion later exposed this rock to the surface, where it could interact with water from the ancient crater lake and carbon dioxide, which was abundant in the planet's early atmosphere.
These interactions produce new minerals called carbonates, which may preserve signs of past life as well as clues about how Mars' atmosphere has changed over time.
“This combination of olivine and carbonate was a major factor in the choice of landing at Jezero Crater,” said lead author of the new paper, Perseverance science team member Ken Williford of the Blue Marble Space Science Institute in Seattle. “These minerals are powerful recorders of planetary evolution and the potential for life.”
Together, the olivine and carbonates reflect the interactions between the rock, water and atmosphere inside the crater, including how each has changed over time. The Margin deposit olivine appears to have been altered by water at the base of the unit where it would have been submerged. But the higher the Perseverance score became, the more the olivine showed textures associated with magma chambers, such as crystallization, and less evidence of water alteration.
As Perseverance leaves the Margin Unit for Lac de Charme, the team will have the opportunity to collect new olivine-rich samples and compare the differences between the two areas.
NASA's Southern California Jet Propulsion Laboratory, managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology, built and operates the Perseverance rover on behalf of the agency's Science Mission Directorate as part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program portfolio.
To learn more about Perseverance, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance
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Andrew Good / DC Egle
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