NASA's Perseverance rover has been searching for ancient life on Mars for more than a year.
Perseverance ground a five-centimetre-wide patch into a rock at the base of the crater. The main reason that NASA sent the rover there was because the river deposited layers of silt into Jezero. The river is usually filled with life.
Scientists hope that the small grains shown in the images will be evidence of life. Sanjeev Gupta, a planetary geologist at Imperial College London, wrote a poem called "To see a world in a grain of sand"
The Jezero delta will be explored by the rover over the next few months as scientists decide where to drill and extract rock samples. The first ever sample return from Mars is planned by NASA and the European Space Agency.
The landing site of Perseverance was several kilometres from the Delta's edge. It spent a lot of time on the crater floor, which is made of rocks that form as molten materials. Scientists were able to date the rocks on the basis of radioactive decay. The best chance of finding evidence of life on Mars is in the fine-grained soils of the delta.
In April, the rover arrived at the base. It found mudstones, which could have formed from the mud deposited by a river or lake. It could have formed in a fast-flowing river with sandstones with coarse grains. According to Perseverance's deputy project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, these kinds of rock are excellent targets for studying a variety of Martian environments where life could have thrived.
Perseverance was moved away from this region, named Enchanted Lake, and towards another area called Hawksbill Gap. One of the oldest rocks formed by Jezero's ancient river and an excellent place to hunt for signs of ancient life can be found in the freshly abraded patch.
About 40 metres above the crater floor is the Delta. Rover drivers will send Perseverance up the front of the delta to assess where and how to take samples. The project manager at JPL says it is like going to a buffet before you eat. It will scout the rocks on the way up. It will collect samples on the way down.
Like a child assembling a set of gemstones for their prized collection, mission scientists are trying to decide which rocks the rover should sample to the most geologically diverse cache. Each tube is a little thicker than a pencil. The tubes are going to be brought back to Earth.
Scientists are considering where to put the first set of samples for the next mission. Some tubes may be put at the base of the delta once the rover makes its way back down. The first cache may be put down when the rover arrives at the site, according to Kenneth Farley, the mission's project scientist. That is when it becomes reality.
The location is flat and has few rocks that could block a future sample-return vehicle. Trosper says it is a good place to land on Mars.
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NASA plans to hold a community meeting in September to see if the collection it has so far is scientific enough to be picked up. All the time and money is required to return the tubes. NASA wants the community to look at the mission team's view that they have the highest value cache available to them.
NASA and the European Space Agency are working on a $5 billion plan to send two landers to Mars with a rover that will pick up samples and a rocket that will send them back to Earth. The first launches were supposed to take place in 2026, but that was changed by Russia's invasion of Ukranian. Russia's space agency had their cooperation stopped by the European Space Agency. NASA and the European Space Agency are revising their Mars-landing plans because of the tensions. Perseverance's sampling tubes are designed to last for decades.
Dust devils loft large amounts of dust into the air and how the speed of sound varies in Mars have been discovered by Perseverance. The extraterrestrial distance record was set in March and April when the rover drove for 5 kilometres.
Perseverance's sidekick, the tiny helicopter Ingenuity, has been instrumental in some of the rover's achievements. It was originally intended to make just 5 flights. It was able to scout the best routes for Perseverance from its vantage point in the sky, and it also looked at the flat area at the base where future missions could land.
The helicopter needs to charge its solar panels and battery when dust in the atmosphere blocks sunlight. As the Martian winter descends, ingenuity is facing dusty skies and cold temperatures, which could cause trouble flying.
Ingenuity has been successful.
The article was published on June 2nd, 2022.
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