An afternoon on Mars: NASAs Perseverance Mars rover utilized its Right Navigation Camera (Navcam) to get this image after driving on sol 428. The view is behind the rover towards the south, and the edge of the Kodiak mound is noticeable on the left side of the image. Determination is expected to arrive at our very first planned place, named Devils Tanyard, within the next couple of sols.
After finishing this very first half of our walkabout, we intend on coming down to sample at 3 of our favorite sites. With these three sample pairs, the team wants to contribute to our Martian antiques a set of fine-grained clay-bearing mudstones that are good candidates for maintaining organics and prospective ancient microbes, as well as coarser-grained sandstones to investigate material washed down from beyond Jezero and to constrain the timing of previous lake activity.
With each rover drive and sample, the group continues to find out more about this when watery crater and piece together the story written in the Martian rocks.
Written by Brad Garczynski, Student Collaborator at Purdue University.
An afternoon on Mars: NASAs Perseverance Mars rover utilized its Right Navigation Camera (Navcam) to get this image after driving on sol 428. The view is behind the rover towards the south, and the edge of the Kodiak mound shows up on the left side of the image. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASAs Mars Perseverance Rover was on the move this previous week after ending up remote science activities at Enchanted Lake, a direct exposure of finely layered rocks that may represent some of the most affordable deposits of the delta. The rover threaded its way east around large sandy dune ripples prior to heading north en path to Hawksbill Gap, where the group hopes to gather our first set of delta samples and eventually ascend the delta front.
Planning this past week at Jezero crater has mainly focused on making drive development with additional reconnaissance imaging to hunt our upcoming walkabout and assistance future planning for Mars Sample Return. The team was able to restore communications with Ingenuity after the current anomaly and is continuing to collect and evaluate the data.
Mars Perseverance Sol 424– Right Mastcam-Z Camera: Mastcam-Z picture of rocks at Enchanted Lake. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
Determination is expected to get here at our first planned area, called Devils Tanyard, within the next few sols. There, we intend on abrading a fresh surface area and getting our eyes and instruments up close to investigate the rocks and identify possible tasting websites. This will be the very first of most likely 5 proximity science stops as we rose Hawksbill Gap up the delta stratigraphy towards an area named Rocky Top.