The Perseverance Rover Cut a Neat Circle Into a Martian Rock

It’s been practically 9 months for the reason that Perseverance rover landed in Jezero Crater, a dried-up lake mattress on Mars. Since then, its science mission has reached full swing, with the rover now scouring the Red Planet’s floor for fascinating rocks to pattern. Just this week, it uncovered a round patch of rock that had by no means earlier than seen the hazy gentle of Martian day.

Perseverance is in search of rock formations that would reveal Mars’s geologic historical past and, doubtlessly, proof that life as soon as existed there. The far-out thought is that, if something as soon as lived on Mars, it could’ve been when liquid water flowed on the floor. Recently, scientists have discovered that not less than a few of the rocks in Jezero are igneous, that means they got here from the planet’s inside, and early findings indicated the lake in Jezero skilled violent flash floods in its historical previous.

Ultimately, the rover is headed for Jezero’s western edge, the place a river delta as soon as fed into the lake. That’s the place scientists suppose any microfossils are more than likely to be discovered, based mostly on the place such microbes are likely to arrange store on Earth.

If current social media postings are something to go by, the rover’s actually loving its job. Last month it swung by a couple of large rock outcrops, and final week it appreciated some pretty layered rocks. Yesterday, the rover’s group introduced they’re getting nearer to selecting the next target for sampling.

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The rover samples rock by picking a location and abrading a circular patch of it, thereby revealing a part that hasn’t been exposed to the elements. Then, it cores that rock and stores the sample within its car-sized frame. Its lazy Susan-like repository for Martian rock will, hopefully, be brought to Earth in the future, probably sometime around 2030.

Once the samples are on Earth, scientists will be able to study them in much more detail than anything they’re able to glean from millions of miles away. The first rock sample had a false start, but NASA scientists were able to collect a sample on their second attempt.

Currently, the rover is to the southeast of its landing site, on the outskirts of the South Séítah region of Mars, which is a pretty tricky series of sand dunes and ridges that can be hard for a rover to navigate. (That’s part of the reason it’s been nice for NASA to use the Ingenuity helicopter as a scout; it can view rocks from above that Perseverance can’t get near.)

The Perseverance mission is planned to last a Martian year, or 687 Earth days. If previous rover lifetimes are anything to go off of, though, we may be blessed with many years thereafter. Hopefully it’s enough time for the rover to find something truly mind-blowing in that dusty crater.

More: Perseverance’s Most Intriguing Images Captured From Mars So Far