this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2024
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NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover

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On the plains of Jezero, the secrets of Mars' past await us! Follow for the latest news, updates, pretty pics, and community discussion on NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's most ambitious mission to Mars!

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Processed post-drive 4-tile NavCam.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

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[–] SpecialSetOfSieves 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

There's going to be a lot of this for the next little while. From the photos returned over recent sols, it would seem the only nearby target of interest is... the rover itself, or rather, the rover's tracks. (There is definitely worthwhile science to be had from observing the tracks, but the study won't be photogenic in the meanwhile).

To be fair, there isn't much but sand and fine gravel around the rover at the moment and for a distance ahead, but the "Crater Rim" part of the campaign is going to look a bit strange in retrospect. Only two abrasion holes and no cores until we reach the summit? I'm looking forward to hearing the latest update from the rover team, because they seem to be sure of what they're doing.

[–] paulhammond5155 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It's a perfect example of bad timing with the levels of atmospheric dust, we could have been snapping those photogenic images of the crater floor from this elevation. I must admit I'm rather surprised that many of the drives (between targets of interest) are so short on such good terrain, as we're not seeing any apparent wheel slip in this section... As you say an update from the rover team would be appreciated :)

[–] SpecialSetOfSieves 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I have only anecdotal evidence to support this, but:

Looking at images like this from the same time last Martian year, when we were on the crater floor, it seemed pretty dusty then, as well.

We've known for quite some time, however, that this general time of year (northern hemisphere winter) is dusty, and we're not very far into spring as yet. I think there would be a lot of science value in observing dust devil and wind gust activity from a significant elevation like this, and I long to see the kind of views you're talking about as well. Unfortunately, dust devils are more of a summer thing, and the mission seems determined to get Percy up and over the summit ASAP. I personally learned to look at Mars differently after seeing the colour images from Ingenuity's later flights, and the perspective on this canyon and delta region from the summit could be significant, not to mention inspiring... provided we could actually see what the view really has to offer.

I've complained about the nosebleeds enough already, so I'm going to refrain from commenting on Ken Farley's driving habits.

[–] paulhammond5155 2 points 3 days ago

Agreed re dusty seasons, it's bad timing and a great pity. There have been a number of recent dust devils in Jezero captured by the cameras. One of the image processing nerds on Mastodon posts them occasionally, but they are usually impossible to see in the raw NavCam image sets, as they are so feint, it takes special processing to extract the data. I'll see if I can find some of his posts and share them here.

There's a new set of NavCam images just hit the server on sol 1343, complete with a 'RMC site' number change (to 63.0000). However a close review of the HazCam images from 1342 and 1343, shows us that the rover is in the exact same place. So I'm assuming it was either a failed drive, or there were issues with the motion sensors at the end of the drive on 1342 that forced a reset. We won't know the cause either way unless we get one of those rare mission updates, or we wait 6 months and see the mission managers repot in the PDS