what NASA’s Perseverance rover has found so far

NASA’s Perseverance rover has had a busy first month on the surface of Mars. From Jezero Crater, where Perseverance landed on Feb. 18, it has done as much geology as possible – taking photos of its surroundings and analyzing the rocks nearby. Scientists on the team have already determined that several of the rocks are chemically similar to volcanic rocks on Earth, and that wind and water have eroded some of them.

“Everything is going great so far,” said Kenneth Farley, a geochemist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and the mission’s project scientist. He and others described Perseverance’s progress at a virtual meeting of the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference on March 16.

As planned, the rover’s main science experiments will have to wait a few more months while engineers continue to test its scientific instruments and prepare for its first helicopter flight to another world. Ultimately, Perseverance will deploy an arsenal of tools, including a drill, a close-up camera and multiple chemical sensors to hunt for signs of past life in Martian rocks.

Meanwhile, team scientists plot how the rover could travel from its landing site – named after science fiction writer Octavia Butler – to the 40-foot cliffs of the ancient river delta that drew persistence to Jezero in the first place. The delta, deposited billions of years ago by a river flowing on Mars, would have been an ideal landscape for ancient microbial life, if it existed. But between Volharding and the delta lies a treacherous dune area, which the rover cannot cross. Researchers are discussing whether to drive clockwise or anti-clockwise around the dune area; the latter would be a shorter journey, while the former would pass a wider variety of interesting rocks.

But this is likely to happen in June at the earliest. First, Perseverance must drive to a suitable place to test Ingenuity, her helicopter. The site will likely be a rock-strewn area not far from the rover’s current location. There, the rover will lower Ingenuity from its belly, drive away from a safe distance, and record a video as the helicopter flies into the skies of Mars. “We’re looking forward to those historic films that are first in aviation,” said Jim Bell, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University in Tempe who leads one of the rover’s camera teams. The helicopter test comes first because Ingenuity will fly the rover as it drives, allowing Perseverance to navigate its way through the landscape.

Until that first flight test, expected in the coming weeks, team scientists explored the rocks around the landing site. Immediately surrounding the rover are light-colored rocks peeping out of dark ground. Perseverance has used a laser-based instrument to determine that several of these rocks, including two team scientists named Máaz and Yeegho, are chemically similar to basalt rocks on Earth, which form from molten rock. The instrument zaps rocks with a laser to vaporize small portions and study their chemical composition. Through this analysis, the scientists see that Yeegho shows signs of water being trapped in its minerals, said Roger Wiens, a geochemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico who heads the laser instrument team. These discoveries were consistent with what scientists expected from Jezero – that it may have volcanic rock on the crater floor, which could have interacted with water over time.

Many of the rocks around the landing site appear to have been sculpted by high winds, including a dark, oddly shaped object that scientists have dubbed the “ harbor seal, ” due to its resemblance to a seal perched on a rock. The winds appear to have scoured the rocks mainly from the northwest, a direction consistent with key wind patterns calculated by global circulation models for Mars, Bell said.

Another dark-colored rock looks like it was weathered not by wind but by water, Farley said. That suggests it can tumble around in running water – perhaps in the ancient river that flows into Jezero, or in its lake. “This is very promising for our study,” he said.

Perseverance scientists have given informal names in the Navajo or Diné language to rocks, craters, and other objects around the landing site. Following a tradition of previous landings on Mars, the scientists choose themes for names based on geological maps of Jezero, which are divided into sections named after national parks on Earth. Perseverance happened to land in the section named after the Canyon de Chelly National Monument, which is located in Arizona in the Navajo tribal lands. Aaron Yazzie, an engineer on the rover team, is a member of the Navajo Nation and has taken charge of coordinating the names. For example, Máaz means Mars, while Yeehgo is an alternate spelling of the word for ‘diligent’.

After the helicopter test and before Perseverance leaves for the delta, the rover will likely drill its first rock sample into the dark, broken rock that makes up much of the Jezero crater floor. Scientists have not yet determined whether this rock is volcanic, but if it is, it could help determine the age of the crater floor, as molten rock traps radioactive elements that decay at a predictable rate and can be used as a clock to date when the material was originally melted.

During its mission, Perseverance will collect about 30 tubes full of Martian rock and Earth and place them on the surface of Mars so that a future mission can find them and fly them back to Earth for scientists to analyze, no sooner than 2031. It will. to happen. the very first monster return from Mars.