Perseverance climbs 500 meters to the edge of Jezero Crater on Mars

Dec. 13 () –

NASA’s Perseverance rover has reached the top of the Jezero crater rim on Mars after a three and a half month journey, with an ascent of 500 meters of elevation and slopes of 20 percent.

The rover made the ascent to explore a region of Mars unlike any other place it had investigated before, making stops along the way to conduct scientific observations.

The Perseverance scientific team shared some of its work and future plans at a press conference within the framework of the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

“During the climb to the rim of Jezero Crater, our rover drivers have done an incredible job negotiating some of the most difficult terrain we have encountered since landing,” he said. in a statement Steven Lee, deputy project manager for Perseverance at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “They developed innovative approaches to overcome these challenges (they even tried driving in reverse to see if it helped) and the rover has overcome it all like a champ. Perseverance is ready for anything the science team wants to throw at it during this next science campaign.”

Since landing on Jezero in February 2021, Perseverance has completed four science campaigns: “Crater Floor”, “Fan Front”, “Upper Fan” and “Margin Unit”. The science team calls Perseverance’s fifth campaign “Northern Rim” because its route covers the northern part of the southwestern section of Jezero’s rim. During the first year of the Northern Rim campaign, The rover is expected to visit up to four sites of geological interest, take several samples and travel approximately 6.4 kilometers.

“The Northern Rim campaign gives us entirely new scientific riches as Perseverance delves into fundamentally new geology,” said Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist at Caltech in Pasadena. “It marks our transition from rocks that partially filled Jezero Crater when it was formed by a massive impact about 3.9 billion years ago. to rocks from deep inside Mars that were thrown up to form the crater rim after the impact“.

“These rocks represent pieces of the early Martian crust and are among the oldest rocks found anywhere in the solar system. Investigating them could help us understand what Mars may have been like, and our own planet, in the beginning”, Farley added.

With “Lookout Hill” – as its arrival point at the top of the crater rim has been dubbed – in the rearview mirror, Perseverance is headed to a scientifically important rock outcrop about 450 meters on the other side of the rim that the science team called “Witch Hazel Hill.”

“The campaign starts with a bang because Witch Hazel Hill represents over 100 meters of layered outcrop, where each layer is like a page in the book of Martian history. As we drive down the hill, We will go back in time, investigating the ancient environments of Mars recorded on the crater rim“said Candice Bedford, a Perseverance scientist at Purdue University in West Layfette, Indiana. “Then, after a steep descent, we will take our first turns of the wheel away from the crater rim towards ‘Lac de Charmes,’ about 3 kilometers to the south.”

Lac de Charmes intrigues the science team because, being located on the plains beyond the rim, it is less likely to have been significantly affected by the formation of Jezero Crater.

After leaving Lac de Charmes, the rover will drive about a mile (1.6 kilometers) back to the rim to investigate a stunning outcrop of large blocks known as megabreccias. These blocks may represent ancient bedrock that broke up during the Isidis impact, a planet-altering event that likely dug deep into the Martian crust. by creating an impact basin approximately 1,200 kilometers wide, 3.9 billion years ago.