NASA’s Perseverance rover gets a stunning view of a large crater on Mars from a slippery slope (video, photos)

NASA’s Perseverance rover recently took a break from its climbing expedition to Mars to survey its old haunts.

The car-sized Perseverance landed on the floor of the 28-mile (45-kilometer) wide Jezero Crater in February 2021 to search for signs of past life on Mars and collect dozens of samples for a future return to Earth.

Perseverance has completed its work on the Jezero Plains and is now exploring the western rim of the crater, heading to explore new and different landscapes on Mars. Late last month, however, the rover stopped to admire the majestic view of Jezero and share the view with its operators on Earth.

looking down the side of a crater on Mars, with rover tracks visible in the foreground — Part of a colored mosaic taken on September 27, 2024 by the Perseverance rover as it ascended the western wall of Jezero Crater. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS)

Mission team members stitched together 44 photographs taken by Perseverance on September 27, creating a mosaic that depicts many of the landmarks explored by the rover.

“The image not only shows our past and present, but also shows the biggest challenge to where we want to be in the future,” Perseverance deputy project manager Rick Welch of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California said in an interview. . statement on Monday (October 28) as NASA shared new images.

“If you look at the right side of the mosaic, you start to understand what we’re dealing with,” he added. “Mars didn’t want anyone to be able to easily reach the top of that ridge.”

Perseverance began climbing in mid-August. The photographs shown were taken halfway to the western edge, near what the mission team calls “Far Rock.” However, the rover is not expected to reach the edge until early December because things are getting pretty rough.

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The ridge Welch refers to has a slope of about 20 degrees, NASA said. It is also slippery: the fragile crust contains loose sand and dust.

Another part, this time with annotations, of the mosaic with improved colors, Perseverance received on September 27, 2024. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

“Mars rovers have navigated steeper terrain and slipperier terrain, but this is the first time we’ve had to deal with both—and on this scale,” JPL’s Camden Miller, planner or “driver.” for the Perseverance mission, the same statement said.

“For every two steps forward that Perseverance takes, we took at least one step back,” added Miller, who also drove NASA’s Curiosity rover, which landed inside Mars’ Gale Crater in 2012 and continues to operate today. por. “The company planning the rover saw a trend toward long, hard work, so we got together to think through several options.”

The tracks shown in this image indicate the slippery terrain encountered by NASA’s Perseverance rover as it ascended the rim of Jezero Crater. The image was taken by one of the rover’s navigation cameras on October 11, 2024. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

These options included driving the six-wheeled Perseverance in reverse, using a heavy reverse “cross-slope” approach, and staying close to the northern edges of the slope, where larger rocks could be buried in the subsurface to improve traction.

All three strategies have helped to some extent, but the northern edge method appears to provide the most bang for the buck, so the rover team is going to prioritize it.

“That’s the plan for now, but we may have to change things in the future,” Miller said. “No rover mission has ever attempted to climb such a large mountain so quickly. The scientific team wants to get to the top of the crater as soon as possible because of the scientific opportunities that exist there. It’s up to us, Mars rover designers, to find out. find a way to get them there.”

NASA’s Perseverance rover gets a stunning view of a large crater on Mars from a slippery slope (video, photos)

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