NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover

Perseverance rover finds possible signs of ancient Red Planet life - "On Earth, these types of features in rocks are often associated with the fossilized record of microbes living in the subsurface."

Looks like we have the makings of a rather nice selfie from Perseverance rover. The full image set is currently being downlinked from Mars. Here's a quick and dirty mosaic roughly assembled using a selection of the available SHERLOC WATSON images.

The images were taken on July 24, 2024 (Sol 1218).

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Perseverance rover acquired this image at 'Bright Angel' using its Left Mastcam-Z camera. Mastcam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rover's mast. This image was acquired on July 21, 2024 (Sol 1215) at the local mean solar time of 15:48:23. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

NavCam of the veined rock where the core was taken. The darker cone shaped tailings are where they acquired the core. The lighter toned patch is where they abraded the rock earlier. One possibility is that the drill went trough the rock into the regolith. We may get more clues when they get close-ups or the cored hole.

Thanks to the result of a heavy rover rolling over a soft rock, Curiosity has exposed a first-of-its-kind discovery on Mars. Rocks containing sulfur are common on Mars, but ones made of pure sulfur have never been seen before.

Mars Guy is Arizona State University associate research professor Dr. Steve Ruff, a Mars geologist with decades of experience exploring the red planet.

Detailed drive data. This data is extracted from JPL's JSON URLs after each drive.

Map has an inset with a zoom of the new location . North is up on these maps

9 NavCam tiles were assembled in MS-ICE. The workspace appears to show where light-toned and dark-toned rocks meet. I'll assume this will be an interesting site for the science team, so we could be here for a few days so they can study the rocks

Climbing above Bright Angel

Perseverance rover completed a drive to the north on Sol 1204 (June 10, 2024). Here's one of the post drive tiled-navigation camera images, this one is looking South-southwest. The total drive distance was 14.4 meters (47.4 ft). During the drive the rover climbed 2.3 meters (7.6 ft). The rover is still in Neretva Vallis, but has climbed high up the north bank of the valley.

Assembled from 16 tiles from the rover's L-NavCam (sol 1201). Lots of detail of the terrain where the rover was stationed off to the side of the current location. Zoom in if Lemmy hosts it full resolution [5113x3833px]

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech 😀

Episode 170 Last month, Perseverance encountered one of the most interesting rocks of the entire mission. It came with a bonus rock that could help explain key events in the history of Jezero crater, but only if Perseverance could make the right moves.

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image using its Left Mastcam-Z camera.

Mastcam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rover's mast.

This image was acquired on June 29, 2024 (Sol 1194) at the local mean solar time of 10:03:45.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

Perseverance looks east after a very short drive on sol 1195. The drive distance was just 33 cm (1.1 ft), probably to bring new targets within reach of the tools / instruments on the rover's robotic arm. Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Postcard from Jezero crater: Perseverance rover acquired this image using its Left MastCam-Z camera. MastCam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rover's mast. This full frame image was acquired on June 29, 2024 (Sol 1194) at the local mean solar time of 10:04:23. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

Inspired by a post from: https://fosstodon.org/@[email protected]

Perseverance discovered rocks filled with parallel mineral veins similar to ones on Earth referred to as “beef”. But now close-up images reveal that the veins are clogged with bits of other rocks and minerals that changes the origin story.

Mars Guy is Arizona State University associate research professor Dr. Steve Ruff, a Mars geologist with decades of experience exploring the red planet. This channel follows the exploration of Jezero crater by the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter, presenting science, engineering, and the search for life on Mars using a novel in-person experience.

This project was initiated in part with collaboration from the NASA Infiniscope project.

NASA - News release - June 26, 2024

NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS