Perseverance rover on Mars Finds mysterious rocks
Image: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU / MSSS
For the past five weeks, Perseverance has been focused primarily on supporting and documenting the pioneering flights of its little cousin, NASA’s 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) Mars helicopter Ingenuity. But the car-sized rover has been doing science work of its own in the background as well.
It is now starting to take measurements from it’s surroundings. For example, Perseverance has extensively photographed its surroundings — the boulder-studded floor of Mars’ 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater, where the rover and chopper touched down on Feb. 18 — with its high-resolution Mastcam-Z imaging system.
Perseverance has also studied nearby rocks in greater detail using two other instruments: its rock-zapping SuperCam laser and the WATSON (“Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and Engineering”) camera at the end of its robotic arm.
The mission team is keen to know whether the stones are volcanic or sedimentary in origin. Volcanic rocks can serve as geological clocks, allowing researchers to better understand the history and evolution of Jezero, which hosted a lake and a river delta billions of years ago. And sedimentary rocks, which form through the deposition of dirt and sand over time, have greater potential to preserve signatures of Mars life, if it ever existed at Jezero.
Hunting for biosignatures is one of Perseverance’s two core mission tasks, along with collecting and caching several dozen samples of potential astrobiological significance. That pristine Mars material will be hauled to Earth by a joint NASA-European Space Agency campaign, perhaps as early as 2031.
Determining the Jezero rocks’ origin may require abrading their surfaces and obtaining compositional information from their interiors using two other instruments on the robotic arm, PIXL (“Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry”) and SHERLOC (“Scanning for Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals”).
“When you look inside a rock, that’s where you see the story,” Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said in a statement.
Perseverance is set to ramp up its science work considerably, for its days as a helicopter observer are mostly over. Ingenuity wrapped up its main technology-demonstrating mission last week and is now embarking on an extended mission designed to showcase the scouting potential of Red Planet rotorcraft.
So Ingenuity will continue to fly for a while, on sorties that could help the Perseverance team pick the most efficient routes and identify rock formations that merit up-close inspection.
See more here: livescience.com
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Heretic Jones
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Sweet! Mars rocks will be hauled to earth!
Just type in your search engine ‘nasa fail compilation’ or something similar. You’ll see insects, rodents, and air bubbles in nasa’s lunar and mars ‘landing’ equipment. Hilarious.
But then again it might be interesting to learn how rocks from Devon Island, Canada (i.e., Mars) differ from other Earth rocks. So what the heck – I’m all in with my tax dollars!
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Mark Tapley
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Hello Jones:
Just like the “moon rocks” that were chipped off the meteorite. No problem, if the cucks are stupid enough to believe in a virus falling out of the sky, they will suck up anything. The Zionists are always running a scam to fleece the flock. And thats on top of the ongoing wealth transfer by their fiat banking cartel.
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itsme
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thats the crummiest sand castle i’ve ever seen
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Wisenox
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“The official altitude record for a helicopter flight is 12,954 m (42,500 ft) set by Fred North in 2002.”
https://pilotteacher.com/how-high-can-you-go-in-a-helicopter-can-you-land-on-mount-everest/
This is < 9 miles.
“The highest atmospheric density on Mars is equal to the density found 35 km above the Earth’s surface.”
https://planetary-science.org/mars-research/martian-atmosphere/
This is ~22 miles. Am I missing something?
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Herb Rose
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Hi Wisenox,
Gravity on Mars 38% gravity on Earth.
Herb
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Herb Rose
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Hi again wisenox,
Mass of CO2 in Mars atmosphere 44. Mass of air molecules on Earth 30. More mass pushed down greater lift.
Herb
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Wisenox
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I don’t think its enough. I think that, if it flew, stability would be shaky and it would end up overturned. The rotors are a mere 4ft across, with a motor that generates a maximum 510 watts. They keep 10% in reserve, but even at max we’re talking 0.694 horsepower. I don’t think it flies when the highest density on mars equates to 21 miles above earth. It may not weigh much, but this is not enough power for that density. There may be some quirk of math, but I’m not buying it.
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