{"id":198655,"date":"2025-04-11T00:59:32","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T14:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/?p=847424"},"modified":"2025-04-11T00:59:32","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T14:59:32","slug":"nasas-perseverance-mars-rover-studies-trove-of-rocks-on-crater-rim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=198655","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s Perseverance Mars Rover Studies Trove of Rocks on Crater Rim"},"content":{"rendered":"
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6 min read<\/p>\n

Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\"This<\/a><\/figure>
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This mosaic showing the Martian surface outside of Jezero Crater was taken by NASA\u2019s Perseverance on Dec. 25, 2024, at the site where the rover cored a sample dubbed \u201cSilver Mountain\u201d from a rock likely formed during Mars\u2019 earliest geologic period.<\/div>\n
NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/ASU\/MSSS<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The diversity of rock types along the rim of Jezero Crater offers a wide glimpse of Martian history.<\/em><\/p>\n

Scientists with NASA\u2019s Perseverance rover are exploring what they consider a veritable Martian cornucopia full of intriguing rocky outcrops on the rim of Jezero Crater. Studying rocks, boulders, and outcrops helps scientists understand the planet\u2019s history, evolution, and potential for past or present habitability. Since January, the rover has cored five rocks on the rim, sealing samples from three of them in sample tubes. It\u2019s also performed up-close analysis of seven rocks and analyzed another 83 from afar by zapping them with a laser. This is the mission\u2019s fastest science-collection tempo since the rover landed on the Red Planet more than four years ago.<\/p>\n

Perseverance climbed the western wall of Jezero Crater for 3\u00bd months, reaching the rim<\/a> on Dec. 12, 2024, and is currently exploring a roughly 445-foot-tall (135-meter-tall) slope the science team calls \u201cWitch Hazel Hill.\u201d The diversity of rocks they have found there has gone beyond their expectations.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring previous science campaigns in Jezero, it could take several months to find a rock that was significantly different from the last rock we sampled and scientifically unique enough for sampling,\u201d said Perseverance\u2019s project scientist, Katie Stack Morgan of NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. \u201cBut up here on the crater rim, there are new and intriguing rocks everywhere the rover turns. It has been all we had hoped for and more.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Perseverance\u2019s<\/a><\/figure>
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One of Perseverance\u2019s hazard cameras captured the rover\u2019s coring drill collecting the \u201cMain River\u201d rock sample on \u201cWitch Hazel Hill\u201d on March 10, 2025, the 1,441st Martian day, or sol, of the mission. <\/div>\n
NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

That\u2019s because Jezero Crater\u2019s western rim contains tons of fragmented once-molten rocks that were knocked out of their subterranean home billions of years ago by one or more meteor impacts, including possibly the one that produced Jezero Crater. Perseverance is finding these formerly underground boulders juxtaposed with well-preserved layered rocks that were \u201cborn\u201d billions of years ago on what would become the crater\u2019s rim. And just a short drive away is a boulder showing signs that it was modified by water nestled beside one that saw little water in its past.<\/p>\n

Oldest Sample Yet?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Perseverance collected its first crater-rim rock sample<\/a>, named \u201cSilver Mountain,\u201d on Jan. 28. (NASA scientists informally nickname Martian features<\/a>, including rocks and, separately, rock samples, to help keep track of them.) The rock it came from, called \u201cShallow Bay,\u201d most likely formed at least 3.9 billion years ago during Mars\u2019 earliest geologic period, the Noachian, and it may have been broken up and recrystallized during an ancient meteor impact.<\/p>\n

About 360 feet (110 meters) away from that sampling site is an outcrop that caught the science team\u2019s eye because it contains igneous minerals crystallized from magma deep in the Martian crust. (Igneous rocks can form deep underground from magma or from volcanic activity at the surface, and they are excellent record-keepers \u2014 particularly because mineral crystals within them preserve details about the precise moment they formed.) But after two coring attempts (on Feb. 4 and Feb. 8) fizzled due to the rock being so crumbly, the rover drove about 520 feet (160 meters) northwest to another scientifically intriguing rock, dubbed \u201cTablelands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Data from the rover\u2019s instruments indicates that Tablelands is made almost entirely of serpentine minerals, which form when large amounts of water react with iron- and magnesium-bearing minerals in igneous rock. During this process, called serpentinization, the rock\u2019s original structure and mineralogy change, often causing it to expand and fracture. Byproducts of the process sometimes include hydrogen gas, which can lead to the generation of methane in the presence of carbon dioxide. On Earth, such rocks can support microbial communities.<\/p>\n

Coring Tablelands went smoothly. But sealing it became an engineering challenge.<\/p>\n

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\"NASA\u2019s<\/a><\/figure>
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Sealing the \u201cGreen Gardens\u201d sample \u2014 collected by NASA\u2019s Perseverance Mars rover from a rock dubbed \u201cTablelands\u201d along the rim of Jezero Crater on Feb. 16, 2025 \u2014 pre-sented an engineering challenge. The sample was finally sealed on March 2.<\/div>\n
NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/ASU\/MSSS<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Flick Maneuver<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u201cThis happened once before<\/a>, when there was enough powdered rock at the top of the tube that it interfered with getting a perfect seal,\u201d said Kyle Kaplan, a robotics engineer at JPL. \u201cFor Tablelands, we pulled out all the stops. Over 13 sols,\u201d or Martian days, \u201cwe used a tool to brush out the top of the tube 33 times and made eight sealing attempts. We even flicked it a second time.\u201d<\/p>\n

During a flick maneuver, the sample handling arm<\/a> \u2014 a little robotic arm in the rover\u2019s belly \u2014 presses the tube against a wall inside the rover, then pulls the tube away, causing it to vibrate. On March 2, the combination of flicks and brushings cleaned the tube\u2019s top opening enough for Perseverance to seal and store the serpentine-laden rock sample. <\/p>\n

Eight days later, the rover had no issues sealing its third rim sample, from a rock called \u201cMain River.\u201d The alternating bright and dark bands on the rock were like nothing the science team had seen before.<\/p>\n

Up Next<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Following the collection of the Main River sample, the rover has continued exploring Witch Hazel Hill, analyzing three more rocky outcrops (\u201cSally\u2019s Cove,\u201d \u201cDennis Pond,\u201d and \u201cMount Pearl\u201d). And the team isn\u2019t done yet.  <\/p>\n

\u201cThe last four months have been a whirlwind for the science team, and we still feel that Witch Hazel Hill has more to tell us,\u201d said Stack. \u201cWe\u2019ll use all the rover data gathered recently to decide if and where to collect the next sample from the crater rim. Crater rims \u2014 you gotta love \u2019em.\u201d<\/p>\n

More About Perseverance<\/strong><\/h3>\n

A key objective for Perseverance\u2019s mission on Mars is astrobiology<\/a>, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover is characterizing the planet\u2019s geology and past climate, to help pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet and is the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.<\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s Mars Sample Return Program, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), is designed to send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.<\/p>\n

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA\u2019s Mars Exploration Program portfolio and the agency\u2019s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis<\/a> missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.<\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.<\/p>\n

For more about Perseverance:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/mission\/mars-2020-perseverance<\/a><\/p>\n

News Media Contacts<\/h3>\n

DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov<\/a><\/p>\n

Karen Fox \/ Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov<\/a> \/ molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov<\/a>  <\/p>\n

2025-051<\/p>\n

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