NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover

Point-to-point was 61.4 meters, so another difficult traverse. We can expect a lot of difficult terrain during the climb to the rim of the crater over the next months.

36.4 meter traverse, but only 14.58 meters point-to-point distance achieved.

4-tile end-of-drive L-NavCam

data extracted from JPL's JSON feeds

Post drive 4-tile R-NavCam from site 56.4106 on sol 1244 NASA/JPL-Caltech

The climb to the top is ~300 meters

Episode 176 A notably red slab of rock with some even more notable features has been the target of intense investigation for the past two weeks. Now Perseverance has dug into it with its abrading tool and opened up a deeper level of intrigue.

The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter made history on August 19, 2021, when it completed the first powered, controlled flight on another planet, a feat that's been called a "Wright Brothers moment."

Originally designed as a technology demonstration to perform no more than five test flights over 30 days, Ingenuity quickly proved it was capable of even more than NASA imagined. Its flights became longer, higher, faster, and more adventurous. Ingenuity later took on another assignment as an operations demonstration to serve as an aerial scout to preview possible areas for the Perseverance rover to explore.

Over the course of its mission life, the helicopter completed 128.8 flying minutes, covering 10.5 miles (17.0 kilometers), and reaching altitudes as high as 78.7 feet (24.0 meters).

Ingenuity flew for the last time on January 18, 2024, and completed its mission on January 25, 2024, after nearly three years of aerial exploration and 72 historic flights.

Ingenuity’s triumph has paved the way for next-generation aerial vehicles to explore Mars and potentially, other space destinations.

link: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-perseverance-rover-to-begin-long-climb-up-martian-crater-rim

Perseverance Project Scientist’s Conference Talk on Mars Sample Return. A key objective of Perseverance rover’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. This talk was presented at the 10th International Conference on Mars at Caltech in Pasadena, California, on July 25, 2024, to a gathering of Mars scientists from a range of disciplines, institutions, and countries. Ken Farley, project scientist for NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover mission, shared information about a new discovery that is “the most puzzling, complex, and potentially important rock yet investigated by Perseverance.”

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61phIWESjis

Episode 175 Perseverance made news last month with its discovery of features dubbed leopard spots that could’ve formed from ancient microbial life. After driving hundreds of meters away, it’s found similar spots, but were they made by microbes or minerals?

Aeolian Landscape: Jezero Crater, Mars. Mission Sol 1234 from site 56.3438. MastCam-Z at maximum zoom (110 mm). A cropped mosaic assembled from 2 overlapping images, the images are from a larger sequence acquired by the rover. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

@FediFollows

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NASA/JPL-Caltech/

Made by the MastCam-Z team

open the official map on this link - https://mars.nasa.gov/maps/location/?mission=M20

Data extracted from JPL's JSON feeds

2x2 end-of-drive tiled NavCam at site: 56.3438.

imported from JPL's M2020 rover and helicopter JSON feeds

Shows the path (with scale) of the drive on 1227. North is up on all of the JPL/NASA mission maps (unless otherwise stated)

23 meter drive, 2 meter climb. Approaching the south bank of Neretva Vallis where it will begin the climb out of the crater in the months ahead.

This photo was selected by public vote and featured as "Image of the Week" for week 180 (July 21 - 27, 2024) of the Perseverance rover mission on Mars. The rover acquired this image using its left-side MastCam-Z camera, it was acquired on July 27, 2024 (Sol 1221) at the local mean solar time of close to 3:55pm. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS