Overlaid on an image from NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter, this map shows the path of Persistence between January 21 and June 11. The white dots show where the rover stopped after completing a pass near the Neretva Vallis river channel. The pale blue line shows the path of the rover inside the channel. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Originally thought of as little more than a road without rocks slowing the rover, Neretva Vallis has offered a wealth of geological options for the science team.
After swerving across a dune field to avoid rocks that rattle the wheels, NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover reached its latest area of scientific interest on June 9. The route change not only cut the estimated travel time to reach the area—nicknamed the “Bright Angel”—by several weeks, but also gave the science team an opportunity to find exciting geological features in a river channel of ancient.
The persistence is in the later stages of its fourth science campaign, looking for evidence of carbonate and olivine deposits in the Margin Unit, an area along the interior of the Jezero crater rim. Located at the base of the northern channel wall, Bright Angel contains light-hued rock outcrops that may represent either ancient rocks exposed by river erosion or sediments that filled the channel. The team hopes to find rocks different from those in the Margin Unit rich in carbonates and olivine and gather more data about the history of Jezero.
To reach Bright Angel, the rover passed a ridge along the channel of the Neretva Vallis river, which billions of years ago carried a large amount of water that poured into the Jezero crater. “We started parallelizing the channel at the end of January and were making pretty good progress, but then the boulders got bigger and more numerous,” said Evan Graser, deputy director of Persistence Path strategic planner at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. of NASA in Southern California. “What had been driving an average of over a hundred meters per Martian day dropped to just tens of meters. It was disappointing.”
Stitched together from 18 images taken by NASA’s Perseverance rover, this mosaic shows a boulder field on Mount Washburn on May 27. Intrigued by the variety of textures and chemical composition in the light-hued rock at the center, the rover’s science team nicknamed the rock Atoko Point. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
Channel surfing
In rough terrain, Evan and his team use the rover’s images to plan trips about 100 feet (30 meters) at a time. To get farther on any given Martian day or days, planners rely on Perseverance’s automatic navigation system, or AutoNav, to take over.
But as the rocks became more numerous, the AutoNav would, more often than not, determine that the walk was not to its liking and stop, dimming the prospects of a timely arrival at Bright Angel. Still, the team had hope, knowing they could find success cutting a quarter-mile (400-meter) dune field into the river channel.
“We had looked at the river channel just to the north as we went, hoping to find a section where the dunes were small and far enough apart for a rover to pass between — because dunes are known to eat Mars rovers,” Graser said. . . “The stand also needed an access ramp that we could safely travel down. When the images showed both, we made a beeline for it.”
The Persistence science team was also eager to travel through the ancient river channel because they wanted to investigate ancient Martian river processes.
NASA’s Perseverance rover was traveling in the ancient Neretva Vallis river channel when it captured this view of an area of scientific interest called “Bright Angel” — the light-toned area in the distance to the right — with one of its cameras. of navigation on June 6. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Rock star
With AutoNav’s help guiding the route on the canal floor, Perseverance covered the 656 feet (200 meters) to the first science stop on a sol. The target: Mount Washburn, a hill covered in intriguing rocks, some of a kind not previously seen on Mars.
“The diversity of textures and compositions at Mount Washburn was an exciting discovery for the team, as these rocks represent a grab bag of geologic gifts brought down from the crater rim and potentially beyond,” said Brad Garczynski of Western Washington University in Bellingham. co-leader of the current scientific campaign. “But among all these different rocks, there was one that really caught our attention.” They called it “Atoko Point”.
About 18 inches (45 centimeters) wide and 14 inches (35 centimeters) tall, the speckled, light-hued stone stands out against a field of darker stones. Analysis by Perseverance’s SuperCam and Mastcam-Z instruments shows that the rock is composed of the minerals pyroxene and feldspar. In terms of the size, shape and arrangement of its mineral grains and crystals – and potentially its chemical composition – Atoko Point is in a league of its own.
Some Perseverance scientists speculate that the minerals that make up Atoko Point were produced in an underground body of magma that is probably now exposed on the crater rim. Others on the team wonder if the stone was created far beyond Lake Jezero’s walls and carried there by swift Martian waters centuries ago. Either way, the team believes that while Atoko is the first of its kind they’ve seen, it won’t be the last.
After leaving Mount Washburn, the rover headed 433 feet (132 meters) north to investigate the geology of Tuff Cliff before making the four-sol, 1,985-foot (605-meter) trip to Bright Angel. Perseverance is currently analyzing a rock outcrop to assess whether a rock core sample should be collected.
citation: NASA Perseverance Crosses Ancient River to Reach Science Goal (2024, June 13) Retrieved June 13, 2024 from https://phys.org/news/2024-06-nasa-perseverance-fords-ancient- river.html
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