NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover

A long drive and climb by Perseverance rover during Sol 1347 (December 3, 2024)

The drive distance was 173.45 meters / 569 feet, and an increase in elevation of 26.9 meters / 88.3 feet.

The post-drive tiled image attached is from one the rover's navigation camera at site 63-1150.

The image was acquired at 2:30pm local mars solar time. The updated map and drive data will be in the comments section of this post.

Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Don't try to tell me that there isn't at least one skier, boarder or sledder among the rover drivers.

Bonus points for the white powder they made with the abrasion tool (left of center, where the tracks meet the rocks). Pico Turquino may not be good enough for certain geologists, but some people know how to have fun on powder that no one has carved in 3 billion years.

Processed post-drive 4-tile NavCam.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

This Rover also drove out of this one:

Looking back with one of Perseverance's zoomable mast cameras (max zoom). This mosaic uses two overlapping images and shows the rover's wheel tracks made when it visited the science waypoint at Pico Turquino. The images were acquired on Sol 1341 from site 62.1840 just before 1 pm local mars solar time, from a distance of ~190 meters / 208 yards). For scale the wheel tracks measure ~3 meters / ~9.5 feet across. Image credits NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

minor annotations added

Perseverance rover drove again on Sol 1339, continuing its long climb towards the rim of Jezero crater. The drive took it further towards the southwest, the drive distance was 29 meters (95.4 feet). During the drive it climbed almost 4 meters (~13 feet). The attached imaged is a crop assembled from 4 post-drive navigation camera tiles, the tiles were acquired at site 62.1840. Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Perseverance rover has driven away from Pico Turquino (see image), and is continuing its climb towards the rim of Jezero crater. It performed contact science there, but no core was taken.

Onwards and upwards!

Image is a roughly processed end-of-drive NavCam from site 62.1666 acquired on Sol 1338.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

I found a ton of new target names. It doesn't look very good tough

and the context for that

Episode one of Separated at Birth? was made 16 months ago after Perseverance discovered a rock that challenged scientific thinking about Jezero crater. Now Perseverance has made an even more disruptive discovery.

MastCam-Z full zoom (110 mm) - Roughly processed - Contrast stretched. Normally I'd be sighing about the increased level of atmospheric dust we're seeing recently, but in this case it sort of improves the image.

I reckon Ansel Adams would have been happy with this shot.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image using its SHERLOC WATSON camera, located on the turret at the end of the rover's robotic arm.

This image was acquired on Nov. 20, 2024 (Sol 1334) at the local mean solar time of 16:26:38.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

4-tile Left NavCam - For scale the abrasion patch has a diameter of 5 cm (2 inches)

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Data extracted from JPL's M2020 JSON feeds

End of drive NavCam - NASA/JPL-Caltech

I assume we'll see some contact science here :)

Rover data JSON: https://mars.nasa.gov/mmgis-maps/M20/Layers/json/M20_waypoints.json

View the official on-line version on https://mars.nasa.gov/maps/location/?mission=M20/

After the 8.9 meters drive on 1327, there was another drive on 1332 of around 50 meters (point-to-point distances). Neither of these drives have been included on the official map, or included in the latest rover JSON URL. I'm assuming that this is related to the job losses announced at JPL earlier this week (>300 jobs lost)

and the old ones

Impact craters can expose the subsurface in a way that no rover is equipped to do. So the biggest crater accessible to Perseverance in many months looked like a good exploration target, until it disappeared from view.