NASA’s Perseverance ended up in a rich scientific hunting ground when there is a guideline for the first good look.
The car size Perseverance landed on the floor of the Jezero crater on February 18 begins an ambitious surface mission that will hunt for signs of ancient Martian life and collect monsters for future returns to Earth, among others.
Perseverance is not yet ready to dive into that work of science; the mission team still conducts health and status checks on its various instruments and subsystems. But the six-wheeled robot recently used its Mastcam-Z camera suite to capture high-definition, 360-degree panorama of its surroundings, and the first foretaste interested the mission team.
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For example, that zoomable panorama A dark stone that the team called “Harbor Seal Rock” was unveiled by Jim Bell, chief investigating officer of Mastcam-Z, of Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, Thursday (February 25) during a discussion on the webcast said.
The Mars wind has probably carved out Harbor Seal Rock in its curious form over the centuries, Bell said. He also pointed out spots that showed evidence of erosion working much faster – places where the propellants are running Persistence’s “crane bird” offspring stage blew away Mars’ blanket of red dust on February 18, exposing the surfaces of small rocks.
In such a spot lies a group of light, heavily protruding stones that caught the attention of missionary scientists.
“Is it volcanic rock? Is it carbonate rock? Is it something else? Does it have covers on?” Bell said. ‘We do not know – we have no chemical data or mineral data about it yet – but boy, it’s definitely interesting, and part of the story about what’s going on here will be told if we have more detailed information about these rocks and of the other materials in this area. ‘
This is one of the most important tasks of Mastcam-Z and Perseverance’s other cameras, Bell said, to find interesting features that Perseverance can study in more detail with its spectrometers and other scientific instruments.
The 28-kilometer-wide (45-kilometer) Jezero crater housed billions of years ago a deep lake and a river delta. Deltas are good at preserving signs of life here on earth, so the Perseverance team is eager for the robber to study the remnants of the function in Jezero. And the delta is visible in the Mastcam-Z panorama; the cliffs indicating its edge are about 2 miles from Perseverance’s landing site, Bell said.
The borderline visible outside the delta cliffs in the Mastcam-Z panorama is the edge of Jezero Crater, he added.
The photo that was recently released is obviously just the beginning. To begin with, it is the lowest resolution panorama that the Mastcam-Z team will set up. Bell said similar surveys, which are three times sharper, will be compiled after Perseverance switches to surface-optimized software, a four-day process already underway.
And we have not yet got the slightest taste of the scientific discoveries of Perseverance. It will take a while to get going, as the mission team’s first big task after getting the rover up and running is to conduct test flights of the 4 lb. (1.8 kilograms) Mars Helicopter Reason, who rode to the Red Planet on Perseverance’s belly.
Ingenieity’s groundbreaking sorties – the first rotorcraft in a world beyond the earth – are likely to take place this spring, and science and sampling are expected to begin in earnest this summer, mission team members said.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.