The perseverance team selects a new rock to open: NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover will destroy the rock at the center of this image, allowing scientists and engineers to assess whether it will maintain the rover’s most powerful sampling drill. Credits: NASA / JPL-Caltech. Full image and legend ›
The rover will destroy a rock this week, allowing scientists and engineers to decide whether that target will withstand its powerful drill.
In its search for signs of ancient microbial life on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover is once again preparing to collect the first of many rock core samples that could eventually be brought to Earth for later study. .
This week, a 7-foot-long (2-meter-long) rover robotic arm tool will degrade the surface of a rock nicknamed “Rochette,” which will allow scientists to look inward and determine if they want to capture a sample with the bit. of rover coring. Slightly thicker than a pencil, the sample would be sealed in one of the remaining 42 titanium tubes aboard the rover.
If the team decides to acquire a core of this rock, the sampling process would begin next week.
The mission attempted to capture its first record of crater soil on August 6 from a rock that eventually turned out to be too creepy, shattering into dust and fragments of material too small to be retained in the crater’s tube. sample before being sealed and stored inside the rover. .
Since then, perseverance has led 455 meters to a ridge nicknamed “Citadelle”, meaning “castle” in French, a reference to how this steep point dominates the ground of Jezero Crater. The ridge is covered with a layer of rock that seems to withstand wind erosion, a sign that it is more likely to hold up during drilling.
The team has added a step to the sampling process for this next attempt: after using the Mastcam-Z camera system to look inside the sample tube, the rover will pause the sampling sequence so that the computer can check the image to make sure the rock core is present. Once a sample is confirmed, they will send Perseverance to seal the tube.
Although the pulverized rock escaped capture in the initial sample acquisition effort, the first sample tube still contains a Martian atmosphere sample, which the mission had planned to acquire at a later time.
“By returning samples to Earth, we hope to answer a variety of scientific questions, including the composition of Mars’ atmosphere, ”said Ken Farley, a scientist for the Persaltance project at Caltech in Pasadena, California. “That’s why we’re interested in an atmospheric sample along with rock samples.”
While at the top of Citadelle, Perseverance will use its underground radar, called RIMFAX (short for Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment), to look at layers of rock below. The top of the ridge will also provide a great vantage point for Mastcam-Z to look for other potential rock targets in the area.
Learn more about the mission
A key goal for Perseverance’s mission to Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s past geology and climate, pave the way for human exploration of the red planet, and be the first mission to collect and hide rock and Martian regolith (broken rock and dust).
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), 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 approach to exploring the Moon to Mars, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare you for human exploration of the red planet.
JPL, which is managed by NASA by Caltech, built and managed the operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more information on perseverance:
mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/ i nasa.gov/perseverance
News media contacts
Andrew Good
Reaction Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
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[email protected]
Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
301-286-6284 / 202-358-1501
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