NASA’s Perseverance Rover Is Finally Getting to the Main Event on Mars

The Perseverance rover is astir to—as the kids say—lock successful and crook its robotic treads onto immoderate of the astir challenging terrain yet.

The rover’s absorption has shifted to Jezero Crater’s occidental rim, which amusement signs of past hydrothermal activity. The probe of the country volition beryllium Perseverance’s 5th technological run connected the Red Planet truthful far.

Percy has been toiling connected the Martian aboveground for the past 3.5 years. In its tenure, the rover has drilled into rocks, taken images of the Martian surface and the Mars chopper Ingenuity, and compiled a postulation of stone samples that volition hopefully— someday—be brought to Earth for study.

The apical precedence of the Perseverance ngo is to analyse whether determination was erstwhile life connected Mars. Billions of years ago, the Red Planet had rivers and lakes; now, the aboveground is arid, rocky, and liquid h2o is not known to exist connected its surface. However, it erstwhile did, and liquid h2o is simply a prerequisite for beingness arsenic we cognize it. (That’s not to accidental alien beingness cannot beryllium without water, but since Earth is the lone spot we cognize of that supports life, that’s the instauration for our champion astrobiological guesses.)

A insubstantial published earlier this period successful AGU Advances describes the astrobiological imaginable of immoderate of the rocks already collected by Perseverance. “Among these stone cores are apt the oldest materials sampled from immoderate known situation that was perchance habitable,” said Tanja Bosak, a geobiologist astatine the Massachusetts Institute of Technology successful Cambridge and subordinate of Perseverance’s subject team, successful a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory release.

“When we bring them backmost to Earth, they tin archer america truthful overmuch astir when, why, and for however agelong Mars contained liquid h2o and whether immoderate organic, prebiotic, and perchance adjacent biologic improvement whitethorn person taken spot connected that planet,” Bosak added.

In the upcoming subject campaign, Perseverance volition person to flooded slopes of up to 23 degrees and a ascent of astir 1,000 feet (300 meters) to acme the rim of Jezero, which billions of years agone contained a monolithic lake.

Its archetypal halt connected the trek volition beryllium Dox Castle, a rocky outcrop connected the rover’s ascent route. From there, Perseverance volition walk different portion of involvement (“Pico Turquino”) earlier arriving astatine Witch Hazel Hill, which contains layers of past worldly that day backmost to erstwhile Mars’ clime was overmuch antithetic than today, according to a JPL release.

Once it makes the climb, the Perseverance could beryllium connected the cusp of caller insights into Mars’ past history—and what, if anything, erstwhile called the desolate satellite home.