NASA's Perseverance Rover Catches Oddball Rock On Mars

Space.com

NASA's Perseverance rover has spotted an oddball rock in an ancient river channel on Mars. Deputy project scientist Katie Stack Morgan explains.   Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

Transcript

00:00The Mars Perseverance rover is about to start climbing out of the crater it landed on,

00:05and it's exploring rocks that are amongst the oldest we've seen on Mars, or the youngest.

00:10Join us as we investigate to find out.

00:15We're here in the Mars yard at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

00:19This is where we test robotic prototypes as we explore Mars.

00:22Right now, the real Perseverance rover is in the main channel that once fed Jezero crater.

00:28That's for sure, rushing water, carrying big boulders and sediment as it filled the crater.

00:33But getting there was a slog.

00:35It was slow going through an area called the margin unit, which is really rocky and hilly.

00:40But once we got out of the rocks, we passed through a dune field, and it has been smooth sailing ever since.

00:45Now that we're in the channel, we're seeing things we've never seen before, like this interesting boulder pile.

00:51Can you tell which rock is not like the others?

00:54We want to know, what is this rock, and where did it come from?

00:57Many of the boulders we see at the Martian surface represent ancient lava flows that have broken up and eroded over time.

01:04But a rock like this one might have come from deeper in the crust,

01:08and could be amongst the oldest rocks we've seen or studied on Mars.

01:12It could also have come from the ancient rocks exposed nearby in the crater rim, which we're about to explore.

01:18Before we get to the rim, though, we're making a stop at a site called Bright Angel.

01:23The rocks there could contain sediments deposited by one of the last bursts of water into the crater,

01:28and could be amongst the youngest rocks we've looked at yet.

01:32Perseverance is equipped with cameras, geochemistry instruments, and an underground radar.

01:37We're going to use observations from these instruments to determine how and when these rocks formed,

01:42and depending on what we find, we may decide to sample these rocks.

01:45Whether Bright Angel is older or younger than what we've seen before in the crater,

01:49these rocks could be an important bookend to our Jezero sample collection.

01:53With Jezero in the rearview mirror, I'm most looking forward to this next phase of exploration on the crater rim.

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