Perseverance Rover Escapes Its Giant Martian Crater. Here’s What Happens Next

Well, look astatine that. The Perseverance rover has clambered retired of the crater that’s been its cradle for astir 4 years connected the Red Planet.

Perseverance landed connected Mars successful February 2021. The rover is charged with looking for biosignatures—evidence that the inhospitable satellite was not lone erstwhile susceptible of supporting life, but actually did. To rapidly sum what the rover has been up to:

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 rover landed successful Jezero Crater, which erstwhile held a ample lake. The crater was formed by an interaction lawsuit immoderate 3.9 cardinal years ago. On the crater’s occidental borderline was a stream delta, which contains compelling rocks that researchers are anxious to survey connected Earth—eventually.

In a session held yesterday astatine the yearly gathering of the American Geophysical Union, Perseverance task scientists discussed Perseverance’s caller environment, and what’s successful store for the rover arsenic it continues its trek crossed the rusty terrain. Briony Horgan, a planetary idiosyncratic astatine Purdue University and co-investigator connected the Perseverance mission, hopped connected the telephone with Gizmodo to sermon what’s next.

“On the crater rim itself is terrain that was uplifted by the impact,” Horgan said. “What’s truly breathtaking astir that is that we’re present supra the spot wherever determination was lasting water. We tin really spot the rocks that were determination earlier the impact—really past stuff.”

The sanction of the crippled for Perseverance is: weird rocks. The rover squad has been imaging and sampling bits of the Martian terrain that person unusual appearances oregon chemic compositions, specified arsenic the “leopard spot” rocks revealed successful July. These rocks could connection hints astatine past life, but besides the evolution of Mars itself. Since past Mars is theorized to person been Earth-like, these rocks tin shed airy connected however our satellite ended up verdant and bedewed and Mars ended up so—well—Martian.

“One of the reasons we’re excited astir the crater rim is that interaction craters make vigor from this large impact,” Horgan said. “It drives hydrothermal systems done the crust, and those are truly habitable environments.”

The Perseverance samples volition beryllium game-changing, allowing scientists to interrogate Mars’ past ancient successful a mode that is precise difficult, if not impossible, to bash remotely with a rover from implicit 100 cardinal miles away.

As Perseverance peers into Mars superlatively past past, scientists tin glean accusation astir its past imaginable to big microbial beingness and the mode the satellite became the arid, rocky, windswept satellite we cognize today.

“These are one-of-a-kind samples that volition thatch america astir about each facet of the aboriginal star strategy and however planets evolve,” Horgan said, “and they’ll support doing that for decades to come.”

It’s a shame that we’ll person to hold for NASA to find the backing and the close program to bring the samples home—it’s hard to clasp ones’ enactment for much than a minute, overmuch little years—but the hold volition surely beryllium worthy it. Until then, determination are plentifulness of insights to beryllium gleaned remotely, arsenic Perseverance begins its enactment with immoderate of the star system’s astir past rocks.