Happy Trails: NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover Looks Back | JPL

Happy Trails: NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover Looks Back | JPL 

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover looks back at its wheel tracks on March 17, 2022, the 381st Martian day, or sol, of the mission.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover is trying to cover more distance in a single month than any rover before it—and it is doing so using artificial intelligence. On the path ahead are sandpits, craters, and fields of sharp rocks that the rover will have to navigate around on its own. At the end of the 3-mile (5-kilometer) journey, which began March 14, 2022, Perseverance will reach an ancient river delta within Jezero Crater, where a lake existed billions of years ago.

This delta is one of the best locations on Mars for the rover to look for signs of past microscopic life. Using a drill on the end of its robotic arm and a complex sample collection system in its belly, Perseverance is collecting rock cores for return to Earth—the first part of the Mars Sample Return campaign.

“The delta is so important that we’ve actually decided to minimize science activities and focus on driving to get there more quickly,” said Ken Farley of Caltech, Perseverance’s project scientist. “We’ll be taking lots of images of the delta during that drive. The closer we get, the more impressive those images will be.”

 A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. 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 (broken rock and dust).

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with European Space Agency (ESA), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

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.

JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

Mission Name: Mars 2020

Rover Name: Perseverance

Main Job: Seek signs of ancient life and collect samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and soil) for possible return to Earth.

Launch: July 30, 2020    

Landing: Feb. 18, 2021, Jezero Crater, Mars

Mars Helicopter (Ingenuity) is now in an operations demo phase.

For more about Perseverance:

mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

nasa.gov/perseverance

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Release Date: March 18, 2022

#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Science #Mars #RedPlanet #Planet #Astrobiology #Geology #Jezero #Crater #Perseverance #Rover #Sol381 #Ingenuity #Helicopter #Robotics #Technology #Engineering #JPL #Pasadena #California #UnitedStates #JourneyToMars #STEM #Education