Perseverance rover collects 2nd Mars sample (photos)
Perseverance drilled another hole in the Red Planet rock dubbed 'Rochette.'
NASA's Perseverance rover has collected two drilled-out samples from this Red Planet rock, which the mission team calls "Rochette."(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Perseverance collected a drilled-out core of a Martian rock dubbed "Rochette" and sealed the sample in its designated titanium tube, mission team members announced via Twitter on Wednesday (Sept. 8).
The second sample that NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover collected from the rock “Rochette” is seen in this photo, which the robot snapped on Sept. 8, 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)
Perseverance landed inside the Red Planet's 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater on Feb. 18. The six-wheeled robot's chief tasks are hunting for signs of ancient Mars life and collecting and caching dozens of samples, which will be brought to Earth by a joint NASA-European Space Agency campaign a decade or so from now.
Early in its mission, the rover also supported and documented the first few flights of NASA's technology-demonstrating Ingenuity helicopter, which traveled to Mars on Perseverance's belly. Ingenuity is now embarked on an extended mission, scouting out areas of potential interest to the rover.
Once Perseverance's samples arrive here, scientists in labs around the world will study them for evidence of life and clues about Mars' climate and geological history, NASA officials have said.
Perseverance first tried to collect a sample on Aug. 5 but was stymied by an unexpectedly soft target rock, which crumbled to bits beneath the rover's percussive drill. Rochette is made of much sturdier stuff, as the two latest drilling efforts have shown.
NASA will hold a news conference at 12 p.m. EDT (1600 GMT) on Friday (Sept. 10) to discuss the recent sampling efforts and what the Perseverance team has learned about Rochette to date, among other topics. You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency.
The briefing participants will be:
Lori Glaze, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division at NASA headquarters in Washington
Jessica Samuels, Perseverance surface mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California
Matt Robinson, Perseverance strategic sampling operations team chief, JPL
Meenakshi Wadhwa, Mars sample return principal scientist, JPL and Arizona State University
Quelle: SC
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Update: 12.09.2021
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NASA’s Perseverance Rover Collects Puzzle Pieces of Mars’ History
Two holes are visible in the rock, nicknamed “Rochette,” from which NASA’s Perseverance rover obtained its first core samples. The rover drilled the hole on the left, called “Montagnac,” Sept. 7, and the hole on the right, known as “Montdenier,” Sept. 1. Below it is a round spot the rover abraded.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover successfully collected its first pair of rock samples, and scientists already are gaining new insights into the region. After collecting its first sample, named “Montdenier,” Sept. 6, the team collected a second, “Montagnac,” from the same rock Sept. 8.
Analysis of the rocks from which the Montdenier and Montagnac samples were taken and from the rover’s previous sampling attempt may help the science team piece together the timeline of the area’s past, which was marked by volcanic activity and periods of persistent water.
“It looks like our first rocks reveal a potentially habitable sustained environment,” said Ken Farley of Caltech, project scientist for the mission, which is led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. “It’s a big deal that the water was there a long time.”
The rock that provided the mission’s first core samples is basaltic in composition and may be the product of lava flows. The presence of crystalline minerals in volcanic rocks is especially helpful in radiometric dating. The volcanic origin of the rock could help scientists accurately date when it formed. Each sample can serve as part of a larger chronological puzzle; put them in the right order, and scientists have a timeline of the most important events in the crater’s history. Some of those events include the formation of Jezero Crater, the emergence and disappearance of Jezero’s lake, and changes to the planet’s climate in the ancient past.
What’s more, salts have been spied within these rocks. These salts may have formed when groundwater flowed through and altered the original minerals in the rock, or more likely when liquid water evaporated, leaving the salts. The salt minerals in these first two rock cores may also have trapped tiny bubbles of ancient Martian water. If present, they could serve as microscopic time capsules, offering clues about the ancient climate and habitability of Mars. Salt minerals are also well-known on Earth for their ability to preserve signs of ancient life.
The Perseverance science team already knew a lake once filled the crater; for how long has been more uncertain. The scientists couldn’t dismiss the possibility that Jezero’s lake was a “flash in the pan”: floodwaters could have rapidly filled the impact crater and dried up in the space of 50 years, for example.
But the level of alteration that scientists see in the rock that provided the core samples – as well as in the rock the team targeted on their first sample-acquisition attempt – suggests that groundwater was present for a long time.
This groundwater could have been related to the lake that was once in Jezero, or it could have traveled through the rocks long after the lake had dried up. Though scientists still can’t say whether any of the water that altered these rocks was present for tens of thousands or for millions of years, they feel more certain that it was there for long enough to make the area more welcoming to microscopic life in the past.
“These samples have high value for future laboratory analysis back on Earth,” said Mitch Schulte of NASA Headquarters, the mission’s program scientist. “One day, we may be able to work out the sequence and timing of the environmental conditions that this rock’s minerals represent. This will help answer the big-picture science question of the history and stability of liquid water on Mars.”
Next Stop, ‘South Séítah’
Perseverance is currently searching the crater floor for samples that can be brought back to Earth to answer profound questions about Mars’ history. Promising samples are sealed in titanium tubes the rover carries in its chassis, where they’ll be stored until Perseverance drops them to be retrieved by a future mission. Perseverance will likely create multiple “depots” later in the mission, where it will drop off samples for a future mission to bring to Earth. Having one or more depots increases the likelihood that especially valuable samples will be accessible for retrieval to Earth.
Perseverance’s next likely sample site is just 656 feet (200 meters) away in “South Séítah,” a series of ridges covered by sand dunes, boulders, and rock shards that Farley likens to “broken dinner plates.”
The rover’s recent drill sample represents what is likely one of the youngest rock layers that can be found on Jezero Crater’s floor. South Séítah, on the other hand, is likely older, and will provide the science team a better timeline to understand events that shaped the crater floor, including its lake.
By the start of October, all Mars missions will be standing down from commanding their spacecraft for several weeks, a protective measure during a period called Mars solar conjunction. Perseverance isn’t likely to drill in South Séítah until sometime after that period.
More About Perseverance
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith --broken rock and dust.
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and bring them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
Quelle: NASA
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Update: 15.09.2021
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Perseverance collects first Mars samples
An image from NASA's Perseverance Mars rover shows where the rover drilled into a rock called Rochette and collected two samples. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
WASHINGTON — NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has collected and stored the first samples of Martian rock for later return to Earth, but exactly when those samples will arrive on Earth remains uncertain.
At a Sept. 10 news briefing, NASA officials and project scientists hailed the collection of two samples from a rock dubbed “Rochette” as a major step forward in the long-term Mars sample return effort that will conclude no earlier than a decade from now with those samples returned to Earth.
“These now represent the beginning of Mars sample return,” said Meenakshi Wadhwa, an Arizona State University planetary scientist who serves as Mars sample return principal scientist for NASA.
The successful collections of the first two samples came a month after the rover tried and failed to collect a sample from another rock, called Roubion. Scientists concluded that the problem was not with the sampling system but instead with the rock itself: it was weaker than expected and crumbled during the sampling process.
The two volcanic rocks are similar, but likely were exposed to different amounts of water, said Yulia Goreva, Perseverance return sample investigation scientist at JPL. Roubion experienced much more alteration in the form of salts created by the exposure to water.
“If these rocks experienced water for long periods of time, there may be habitable niches in these rocks that could have supported ancient microbial life,” said Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance deputy project scientist at JPL. The project thus decided to collect two samples of Rochette, with plans to later store them in separate sample caches to increase the likelihood at least one makes it back to Earth.
Perseverance will collect about three dozen samples during its mission. Scientists said at the briefing they were planning their next sample collection efforts and left open the possibility of making another attempt to collect samples from Roubion.
Two future missions will retrieve those samples and bring them back to Earth. A lander mission, led by NASA and including a European Space Agency rover, will pick up the samples, load them into a container and launch them into orbit around Mars. An ESA-led orbiter, with a NASA-provided collection system, will grab the samples and return them to Earth.
Those later missions will launch no earlier than 2026, although they are still in what NASA calls Phase A, focused on initial studies. “As part of Phase A, we are exploring a bunch of different trades and trying to best understand how we can execute this mission,” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division. “We’re where we should be right now.”
She didn’t elaborate on what trades were being studied or when that would be complete. An independent review last year recommended NASA consider several changes, ranging from pushing the launch of the missions to 2028 to considering splitting the sample return lander into two spacecraft and using nuclear, rather than solar, power for it. There’s growing skepticism in the planetary science community that the two Mars sample return missions could be ready to launch in 2026.
Funding, she added, is not an issue. “We are extremely pleased with the budget request that the president put forward for fiscal year 2022 and beyond, and I think we are in a really good place right at this moment with the funding that we have,” she said. That budget proposal included $653 million for Mars sample return in 2022 and projected spending $3.5 billion from 2022 through 2026.
In the meantime, Perseverance will continue to collect samples for eventual return to Earth. “In our science community, we’ve talked about Mars sample return for decades,” said Wadhwa. “Now it’s actually starting to feel real.”
Quelle: SN
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Update: 20.09.2021
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Take a 3D Spin on Mars and track NASA's Perseverance Rover
NASA's Mars Perseverance rover is shown at its landing site in Jezero Crater in this view from the "Explore with Perseverance" 3D web experience. This interactive web tool features a 3D model of the rover on 3D landscape created from real images taken by Perseverance. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Two interactive web experiences let you explore the Martian surface, as seen by cameras aboard the rover and orbiters flying overhead.
It's the next best thing to being on Mars: Two online interactive experiences let you check out Jezero Crater - the landing site and exploration locale for NASA's Perseverance rover - without leaving our planet.
One new experience, called "Explore with Perseverance," allows you to follow along with the rover as though you were standing on the surface of Mars. Another interactive - "Where Is Perseverance?" - shows the current location of the rover and Ingenuity Mars Helicopter as they explore the Red Planet. It's updated after every drive and flight and allows you to track the progress of Perseverance and Ingenuity, in their journeys on and above the Red Planet.
Explore with Perseverance is made mostly with images taken by the rover from various vantage points, with additional images from the HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Experiment) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter overhead.
"It's the best reconstruction available of what Mars looks like," said Parker Abercrombie, a senior software engineer who is leading the software development at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The agency's Mars Public Engagement team recruited Abercrombie and his colleagues, who work on similar tools for the mission team, to develop a public-friendly experience by stitching together and reconstructing the Perseverance and HiRISE images.
The team plans to update the site regularly with new views from the spacecraft and the rover and some new points of interest, as they are found. For example, says Abercrombie, "we can highlight scientifically interesting rocks and other features, or the Ingenuity helicopter flight locations."
Abercrombie believes the site will help people understand the perspective as if they were on Mars. "It's sometimes hard for people to grasp location and distance from Mars images. It's not like here on Earth, where you can get your bearings by looking at trees and buildings. With the Martian terrain, it can be really hard to wrap your head around what you're seeing."
The dashboard makes it easy for parents and teachers to share the 3D views with kids, bringing them along as Perseverance explores.
The 3D tool is based on the Advanced Science Targeting Tool for Robotic Operations (ASTTRO) that the rover's science team uses to select interesting targets for the rover to study - but has been modified to make it more user-friendly.
"It's a unique challenge to set things up so people can browse in a way they'll understand, since users have varying experiences in using 3D environments," Abercrombie said. "This is a great opportunity for the public to follow along with the mission, using the same type of visualization tools as the mission scientists."
A Mars Map of the Rover and Helicopter Journeys "The Where Is Perseverance? map allows you to see more of what we're doing and where we're going," said JPL Mapping Specialist Fred Calef. It, too, is based on ASTTRO, and Calef notes that you'll get the data almost as fast as the engineers and scientists do. Plus, you're using practically the same software the team uses, "so everyone can explore the way we explore in almost the same way," Calef says, zooming in, zooming out, and panning around.
The map shows the rover's route and its stopping points with markers indicating the Martian day, or sol, and you'll get the overview of where Perseverance and Ingenuity might head next. Terrain maps like this one allow scientists to spot interesting places to look for possible evidence of ancient life, and you'll be able to share in the journey.
When Ingenuity flies, it's usually a burst of activity and then a lull for a couple of weeks. The rover, says Calef, "drives more often, though not as far, traveling around 130 meters [142 yards] on its longest drive (sol) to date. When we find a geologically interesting spot, we'll stop for a week or so to check it out."
Quelle: SD
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NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter Captures a Mars Rock Feature in 3D
NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter provided a 3D view of a rock-covered mound during its 13th flight on Sept. 4. The plan for this reconnaissance mission into the "South Seitah" region of Mars' Jezero Crater was to capture images of this geologic target - nicknamed "Faillefeu" (after a medieval abbey in the French Alps) by the agency's Perseverance rover team - and to obtain the color pictures from a lower altitude than ever before: 26 feet (8 meters).
About 33 feet (10 meters) wide, the mound is visible just north of the center of the image, with some large rocks casting shadows. Stretching across the top of the image is a portion of "Artuby," a ridgeline more than half a mile (900 meters) wide. At the bottom of the image, and running vertically up into the middle, are a few of the many sand ripples that populate South Seitah.
Best viewed with red-blue glasses, this stereo, or 3D, view (also called an anaglyph) was created by combining data from two images taken 16 feet (5 meters) apart by the color camera aboard Ingenuity.
Quelle: SD
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Update: 24.09.2021
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Flying on Mars getting tougher as Ingenuity helicopter gears up for 14th hop
Mars' air is thinning out as the seasons change.
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter flew over these sand dunes and rocks during its ninth flight, on July 5, 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter is getting ready for its 14th Red Planet flight, but the thinning Martian air is making such sorties more and more challenging.
The coming sortie, which could occur any day now, is a straightforward hop compared to some of the more daring scouting flights that Ingenuity has been making to aid NASA's Perseverance rover, mission team members said in a recent update. There's a good reason for the simplicity: The 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) chopper will test higher rotor spin speeds to see if it can keep flying in rapidly changing seasonal atmospheric conditions on Mars.
The flight plan calls for Ingenuity to take off, climb up to 16 feet (5 meters) and make a sideways maneuver before landing. The flight was originally supposed to take place no earlier than Sept. 17, but that was dependent on the mission team being ready for the opportunity. Updates will be published on Perserverance's official Twitter feed as more developments can be reported.
The short test flight, whenever it occurs, is expected to include a rotor speed of roughly 2,700 revolutions per minute (RPM), assuming that a planned ground test of a 2,800 RPM spin goes to plan. (By comparison, prior Mars experience had Ingenuity flying at about 2,537 RPM.) The greater rotation rate will, engineers hope, allow the drone to fly despite a thinning atmospheric density.
"It is actually getting more difficult [to fly] every day: I'm talking about the atmospheric density, which was already extremely low and is now dropping further due to seasonal variations on Mars," Ingenuity chief pilot Håvard Grip, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, wrote in the update.
Grip explained that Ingenuity's flight campaign was designed to last just a few months after the Perseverance mission landed inside Mars' Jezero Crater in February. Ingenuity far exceeded expectations and is still flying, testing how rotorcraft could act as scouts for rovers or perhaps even human missions.
But Ingenuity wasn't designed for changing seasonal conditions. Originally, the atmospheric density in Jezero Crater was equivalent to about 1.2% to 1.5% that of Earth. But now the densities are approaching 1% during the afternoon hours preferred for flight, when currents off the ground cause less instability for the low-flying drone.
"The [atmospheric] difference may seem small, but it has a significant impact on Ingenuity’s ability to fly," Grip explained. Ingenuity's thrust margin, or the excess thrust the drone produces above what it requires to hover, has been decreasing as the Mars atmosphere thins. If the atmospheric density drops too far, Ingenuity could perhaps come close to a stall in mid-air.
"Thankfully, there is a way to tackle this issue — but it involves spinning the rotors even faster than we have been doing up to now," Grip continued. "In fact, they will have to spin faster than we have ever attempted with Ingenuity or any of our test helicopters on Earth. This is not something we take lightly, which is why our next operations on Mars will be focused on carefully testing out higher rotor speeds in preparation for future flights."
The Ingenuity team will be looking for a few potential issues. One is that the higher RPM, coupled with wind and helicopter movements, could make the rotor blades hit the atmosphere at roughly 0.8 Mach, or 80% the speed of sound. (The speed of sound on Mars is only three-quarters that on Earth, due to the Red Planet's much lower atmospheric density.)
"If the blade tips get sufficiently close to the speed of sound, they will experience a very large increase in aerodynamic drag that would be prohibitive for flight," Grip said. "For Ingenuity’s rotor we do not expect to encounter this phenomenon until even higher Mach numbers, but this has never been confirmed in testing on Earth."
Engineers will also watch out for potential resonances that could cause the helicopter to vibrate at particular frequencies, which at worst could "cause damage to hardware and lead to a deterioration in sensor readings needed by the flight control system," Grip said. Other considerations will include more power needed from the electrical system and higher loads required by the rotor system.
"It all adds up to a significant challenge, but by approaching the issue slowly and methodically, we hope to fully check out the system at higher rotor speeds and enable Ingenuity to keep flying in the months ahead," Grip said. "Stay tuned for updates."
Quelle: SC
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Update: 5.10.2021
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NASA plans careful restart for Mars helicopter after quiet period
The Mars helicopter Ingenuity is on its own without NASA's guidance for two weeks as the sun interferes with communications to the Red Planet.
Sometime around Oct. 14, NASA plans to check in with the helicopter and the Mars rover Perseverance. Previous rovers have endured so-called solar conjunction communication dropouts, but never has a tiny aircraft sat alone on the planet for so long with no Earthly contact.
"Ingenuity is unique, something never tried before," Jaakko Karras, Ingenuity deputy operations lead, told UPI.
"It contains all kinds of components and construction methodologies that have no parallel on Mars. We just don't know what will happen during the conjunction, although we're hopeful," Karras said.
Potential hazards during conjunction include dust storms that could cover Ingenuity's solar panels, which are crucial for battery recharge, Karras said. Or, coarse Martian dust could penetrate sensitive technology.
There's also a risk that extreme temperature fluctuations -- as low as -130 F -- could stress components beyond their breaking points, Karras said.
NASA designed the 4-pound aircraft to fly five times, and it already flew 13 missions. After its initial success, NASA transitioned to using the helicopter as a scout for the Perseverance rover, rather than a simple technology demonstration.
NASA had drafted a plan for Ingenuity's Flight 14, a brief test flight to see how the helicopter would perform in the new Martian summer at the aircraft's location in Jezero Crater.
The test was needed because the relatively warmer temperatures of summer meant the already-thin Martian air is slightly less dense.
NASA had spun the twin rotors on Ingenuity to see if they could rotate faster to accommodate the thinner air. They worked well, according to the space agency.
On Sept. 18, Ingenuity was to conduct a short hop flight to further test its function in the summer environment. But the helicopter aborted the flight automatically.
Data indicated the abort was due to a problem with mechanisms that help control direction and position of the rotors -- also known as a swashplate and servos, according to Karras.
Two subsequent spin tests of the rotors did not repeat the problem, but NASA decided to wait until after the solar conjunction to attempt Flight 14, according to the agency.
NASA officials are concerned that the components of Ingenuity's steering controls could be wearing out, Karras said. But the problem also may have been a temporary issue related to the position of the rotors, he said.
"Without being able to inspect the vehicle, and with limited data, it's really difficult to put a probability on those two theories," Karras said.
So Ingenuity will sit motionless on Mars for two weeks. It will send data to the nearby Perseverance rover twice during that time, and NASA will check that data for its condition after Earth and Mars orbits clear the sun's interference.
"We're planning to come out of conjunction with some additional helicopter health checkouts, but we hope Flight 14 will happen quickly afterward," Karras said.
Quelle: SD
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HiRISE spots Perseverance in South Seitah
Mars 2020 Perseverance as seen by the MRO HiRISE camera.
The white speck is NASA's Perseverance rover in the "South Seitah" area of Mars' Jezero Crater. The image was taken by the agency's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter using its High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, camera.
The University of Arizona, in Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., in Boulder, Colorado. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet's geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
Quelle: SD
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Update: 9.10.2021
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NASA’s Perseverance Rover Finds Signs of Epic Ancient Floods on Mars
New results from the mission reveal that its landing site of Jezero Crater has a surprisingly dynamic and complex hydrologic history
A view of the stacked sediment layers in a partial remnant of an ancient river delta within Jezero Crater, as captured by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover on February 22, 2021. Studies of this and other rocky outcrops have uncovered signs of heavy flooding in the site’s remote past. Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, ASU and MSSS
For decades, the standard perception of Mars has been almost black-and-white in its simplicity—or rather red and blue: There is the barren, freeze-dried and rust-ruddy planet of today. And eons ago, there was a world warmer, wetter and more aquamarine with rivers, lakes, oceans and perhaps even life on its surface. In this red-and-blue view of Mars is much like a coin, with scientists questing to understand what caused the great planetary flip between its two opposing sides. Yet the closer they look, the clearer it is that this crude dichotomy cannot be entirely true: Mars, like Earth, is and always has been many worlds in one. The story of its habitability may be best understood not as a single, one-way global shift between red and blue but instead a series of hopscotch skips across a motley, regional patchwork of complex, changing conditions.
“It’s very easy to see Mars as one thing at one time,” says Matt Balme of the Open University, based in England. “But there were locations that were warm, wet, cold and dry, all at once.”
A research paper published today in the journal Science highlights this more nuanced view in exquisite detail. (Balme was not involved with the work.) It reports initial results from an in situ visual survey of the “Octavia E. Butler” landing site of NASA’s Perseverance rover, which touched down in Jezero Crater in February. Mission planners chose Jezero because orbital images suggested it harbors an ancient river delta and lake system sculpted by flowing water billions of years ago. Now analysis from Perseverance has not only confirmed this to be true but has also discovered short-lived episodes of sudden change that happened there.
Co-led by Nicolas Mangold of the University of Nantes in France, the study team used images taken by Perseverance to examine the size, orientation and distribution of rocks strewn around the rover and embedded in sedimentary layers on exposed cliff faces and outcrops up to several kilometers away. The results show that 3.7 billion years ago, a river did indeed flow into this region at speeds of several meters per second, feeding a lake that filled the 45-kilometer-wide crater to depths as great as 100 meters in places. But the team’s analysis also revealed unexpected fluctuations in the lake’s depth, which appeared to occasionally rise or fall by several meters, possibly the result of seasonal variations. “There was a lake,” Mangold says, “but the story is different than expected.”
The most surprising characters in the story of Jezero so far were spied jutting from the delta’s fine-grained sediments: boulders more than a meter across that were worn round and smooth by long tumbles through Jezero’s river yet paradoxically too immense for any mere river to move. “They should not be there,” Mangold says. The explanation might be that, at some point, this region experienced extreme flooding in which the boulders and other debris were washed across great distances by walls of water cascading along the riverbed before a final plunge into the ancient lake. What might have caused floods of such magnitude is not clear, but on Earth, large amounts of melting ice or heavy precipitation can be the culprit behind such phenomena.
These boulders and their surrounding sediments could represent a fantastic opportunity to study material that originated far beyond Jezero’s perimeter, says Kirsten Siebach of Rice University, who was not involved in the paper. “Perseverance might be able to sample rocks that were really far upstream,” she says, referring to the rover’s key objective of retrieving specimens for future return to Earth.
A more active and extreme Martian hydrology was also described in a recent paper published in Nature by geologist Timothy Goudge of the University of Texas at Austin and his colleagues. That work showed that perhaps a quarter of the valley networks seen on Mars today could have been carved out on extremely short timescales by vast torrents of waterrushing across the surface in episodes of catastrophic flooding. “Instead of carving the canyons over tens or hundreds of thousands of years, it would be on the order of weeks to months to maybe a few years,” Goudge says. “It’s sort of geologically instantaneous.”
Such violent, cataclysmic deluges may have been the bane of any organisms in their path, but they could be a boon for earthbound astrobiologists looking for their remains with a robotic rover. If anything ever did stir to life in the seemingly prime habitable conditions of Jezero’s river and lake, proof of its existence could have been preserved as the floodwaters rushed in, shielded from the ensuing eons of harsh surface conditions by a protective blanket of suddenly deposited sediments. “It means they’re shielded from radiation and not being weathered,” says Michael Meyer, lead scientist of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. For Perseverance, these deposits inside the river delta could thus be one of the best locations to look for evidence of past life on Mars. “It’s a great target,” Meyers says.
What all this portends is nothing less than a new era in our otherworldly exploration. With each additional sign that Perseverance and other missions find of localized, transient events profoundly shaping parts of the Martian landscape, another colorful thread will be woven into the grand tapestry of the planet’s history. Whether in the welcoming blue of a clear crater lake or in the rushing red torrent of sediment-filled floods, our neighboring orb still has much to tell us. “We’re just starting to understand the complexities of Martian history,” Siebach says.
Quelle: SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
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Update: 11.10.2021
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Rocks on Floor of Jezero Crater, Mars, Show Signs of Sustained Interactions with Water
Portland, Ore., USA: Since the Perseverance rover landed in Jezero crater on Mars in February, the rover and its team of scientists back on Earth have been hard at work exploring the floor of the crater that once held an ancient lake. Perseverance and the Mars 2020 mission are looking for signs of ancient life on Mars and preparing a returnable cache of samples for later analyses on Earth.
Katie Stack Morgan is the Mars 2020 Deputy Project Scientist and a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and will be providing an update on early results on the Mars 2020 rover mission on Sunday, 10 Oct., at the Geological Society of America’s Connects 2021 annual meeting in Portland, Oregon.
With Perseverance’s high-tech suite of on-board instruments, the scientific team has been analyzing the rocks of the crater floor, interpreted for now as igneous rocks, presumably a volcanic lava flow.
“The idea that this could be a volcanic rock was really appealing to us from a sample return perspective because igneous rocks are great for getting accurate age dates. Jezero was one of the few ancient crater lake sites on Mars that seemed to have both incredible sedimentary deposits as well as volcanic deposits that could help us construct the geologic time scale of Mars,” said Stack Morgan.
The lake system and rivers that drained into Jezero crater were likely active around 3.8–3.6 billion years ago, but the ability to directly date the age of the rocks in laboratories on Earth will provide the first definitive insight into the window of time that Mars may have been a habitable planet.
Using Perseverance’s abrasion tool—which scratches the top surface of the rock to reveal the rock and its textures—the team discovered that the crater floor seems to be composed of coarser-grained igneous minerals, and there are also a variety of salts in the rocks. Observations suggest that water caused extensive weathering and alteration of the crater floor, meaning that the rocks were subjected to water for a significant duration of time.
After using its on-board tools to analyze characteristics of the crater floor, the next phase was for Perseverance to collect a rock sample using its drill feature. However, after Perseverance completed its first attempt at drilling, the core sample tube came up empty.
“We spent a couple of days looking around the rover thinking that the core might have fallen out of the bit. Then we looked back down the drill hole thinking it might never have made it out of the hole. All these searches turned up empty. In the end we concluded that the core was pulverized during drilling,” said Stack Morgan.
The rock likely became so altered and weakened from interactions with water that the vibrations and strength from the Perseverance drill pulverized the sample.
Scientists then targeted another rock that appeared more resistant to weathering, and Perseverance was able to successfully collect two core samples—the first in its sample collection. Perseverance’s cache of samples will be part of a multi-spacecraft handoff, still in development, that will hopefully be returned to Earth in the early 2030s. From there, scientists in laboratories on Earth will date and analyze the rocks to see if there might be any signs of ancient Martian life.
“The rocks of the crater floor were not originally envisioned as the prime astrobiology target of the mission, but Mars always surprises us when we look up close. We are excited to find that even these rocks have experienced sustained interaction with water and could have been habitable for ancient martian microbes,” said Stack Morgan.
Session 14: T117. Perseverance at Jezero Crater—Characterizing an Ancient Crater Lake Basin on Mars Paper 14-1: Early results from the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover in Jezero Crater, Mars https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2021AM/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/367543
Quelle: The Geological Society of America
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Update: 24.10.2021
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The Mars helicopter Ingenuity is ready to fly again after interplanetary radio blackout
The little chopper's next flight might take place Saturday.
A photograph taken by the Perseverance rover of the Ingenuity helicopter on the surface of Mars in April, just after the rover deployed the chopper.(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
NASA's Mars helicopter is ready to make its first flight attempt after a two-week communications blackout caused by the sun's being directly between Earth and the Red Planet.
The Ingenuity helicopter, a technology demonstration drone that was supposed to fly at most five times within a month, has instead flown 13 successful sorties to date, accompanying the car-sized Perseverance rover on its explorations of their Jezero Crater landing site. NASA's entire Mars fleet took a vacation in early October, as the sun blocked communications from Earth in what's dubbed a solar conjunction. But now, the helicopter is ready to dust off its skills, with its mission team targeting a flight as early as Saturday (Oct. 23).
"Now that conjunction is over, #MarsHelicopter can attempt flight 14," mission personnel wrote in a tweet on Thursday (Oct. 21). "Ingenuity successfully performed a 50 rpm [rotations per minute] spin test this week & will do a short hop no earlier than Oct. 23."
The communications pause came just after two other challenges faced the Ingenuity team. First, as the seasons change on Mars, the atmosphere over Jezero Crater is thinning, making it more difficult for the helicopter to build lift. To address that challenge, engineers programmed Ingenuity to spin its blades even faster, targeting a flight at 2,700 rpm.
But that flight didn't happen. On Sept. 18, when Ingenuity was scheduled to take off, its automatic system detected anomalies in two of its six flight-control servo motors. Because these parts control the tilt of the helicopter's blades for steering, Ingenuity conducts a "servo wiggle" before each flight to ensure all six are working properly. But on that flight day, they weren't, so Ingenuity skipped the flight attempt.
Engineers on the Ingenuity team used the rest of the month to analyze the situation and conduct a few extra servo wiggles, but they weren't ready to attempt another flight before solar conjunction.
During the solar conjunction, Ingenuity also marked six months from its deployment in early April. Over the course of its 13 flights to date, it has covered about 1.8 miles (2.9 kilometers) according to NASA's flight log, and the images it has captured during those flights have guided Perseverance in its own exploration of the region.
Quelle: SC
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Update: 26.10.2021
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Mars helicopter Ingenuity approaches 14th flight
The Mars helicopter Ingenuity is ready for a short Martian flight as early as Saturday to test summer weather conditions that have arrived at its location on the Red Planet after two weeks of no communication because of blockage by the sun.
The flight, Ingenuity's 14th, is brief and simple by design. As weather at Jezero Crater gets warmer, the aircraft's rotors must turn faster to achieve flight, so engineers have designed a quick hop to test the helicopter's performance.
"Ingenuity successfully performed a ... spin test this week & will do a short hop no earlier than [Saturday]," NASA posted on Twitter. "This is to test out flying in lower atmospheric densities."
Ingenuity and the rover Perseverance emerged from an almost-complete blackout in communication Thursday after Earth and Mars moved so that the sun came between them. Only short pings of transmissions were attempted during the solar conjunction, to ensure the robotic explorers were functioning.
As of Friday, NASA engineers believed Ingenuity was healthy after the tiny, 4-pound aircraft spun its rotors for a brief preflight test.
NASA designed the aircraft to fly five times, and it already has flown 13 missions. After its initial success, NASA transitioned to using the helicopter as a scout for the Perseverance rover rather than a simple technology demonstration.
Ingenuity previously aborted an attempt at the 14th flight in September. Data indicated that was due to a problem with mechanisms that help control direction and position of the rotors. But two subsequent spin tests of the rotors did not repeat the problem, NASA engineers said.
The engineers said they are concerned that Ingenuity's parts could be wearing out due to the stress of extreme temperatures and the extended nature of the helicopter's mission.
Quelle: SD
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Update: 7.11.2021
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Flight #15 - Start of the Return Journey
Flight Profile for Ingenuity's Flight 15: This annotated image depicts the planned ground track of NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter (light blue) during its 15th flight at Mars. The blue X denotes the takeoff location, blue dot is landing. Red X is the current Perseverance location. The green lines indicate the expected sightlines that will be captured in the flights 10 planned color images. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
With conjunction over and our first flight at 2,700 RPM behind us, Ingenuity is ready to begin the journey back to the Wright Brothers Field at the Octavia E. Butler landing site, before venturing beyond. The above figure depicts the mission ahead of Ingenuity, which is to join Perseverance in the trek north along the east edge of Seitah, before traveling west to reach the Jezero ancient river delta.
To accomplish this feat, the Ingenuity team is planning a series of 4-7 flights to return to Wright Brothers Field. Along the way the project is considering preparing a flight software upgrade for our helicopter which will potentially enable new navigation capabilities onboard, and better prepare Ingenuity for the challenges ahead.
Flight #15 is the start of our journey back to Wright Brothers Field. Taking place no earlier than Saturday, Nov. 6 at 9:22 a.m. PT, or 12:03 LMST (local Mars time), the 254th sol (Martian day) of the Perseverance mission, Flight #15 will return Ingenuity back to the Raised Ridges region, imaged in Flight #10.
In this flight the helicopter will traverse 1,332 feet (406 meters) during 130 seconds of flight, travelling at 11.1 mph (5 mps) groundspeed. We'll capture color return-to-earth (RTE) high resolution (13MP) images, one post-takeoff pointed to the SW, and nine pointed toward the NW along the flight-path. Nominal altitude for the flight is expected to be 39.3 feet (12 meters) above ground level.
This will be the second flight of Ingenuity during Mars' summer low air-density, requiring that the rotor blades are spun at 2,700 RPM to compensate. This flight will generate critical high-RPM motor performance, which the team will use to design and tailor upcoming low-density flights in the months ahead.
Below is an updated ledger of some of the most important numbers for Ingenuity's Mars flights so far. Along with those listed below, we've taken 83 13-megapixel color images, 1,772 black-and-white navigation camera images, and performed two flight software upgrades along the way.
