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Rover Field Reports from Mars

Status Reports for Perseverance rover at Jezero Crater Mars First 575 sols on Mars

 

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L.S. Crumpler, NMMNHS & Perseverance Science Team

As of sol 575 Perseverance has travled over 12 km and Ingenuity has made 33 flights. Currently Persverance is collecting samples at the base of the Jezero Crater delta. I have been field geologic mapping the traverse out to 30 m from the rover during the entire delta campaign and some of the maps are shown in the following. The delta is a classic Earth-style "Gilbert delta" and the layers of sediment arre being examined carfefully for potential biogenic materials, cored, and stired on the rover for delivery to a caching site. Shortly we will collect a couple of more samples and then drive to the sample caching site where the Mars Sample Return lander will land some time after 2030, collect the samples from the cache, and return them to Earth.


 

 


Archived Reports


Another New Mexico name gets used for a Mars outcrop target.

The drive to the current target went well. But Opportunity will need to do some “adjustment” bumps in order to put the target in the work volume of the IDD. Because the IDD has a bad shoulder joint, Opportunity can only operate the arm in a single plane, more or less. So the part of any outcrop target that we would like to examine has to be pretty much in that plane and reachable. So careful positioning is necessary with particularly small targets like the one we are attempting to analyze.

We finished up with examination of  the big outcrop ("Copper Cliff") and moved to the next target over the weekend.

So we bumped towards the big outcrop ("Copper Cliff"). In the next plan we will center the rover work volume on a target that we have selected.

An attempt to bump left and get a small bright vein into the IDD work volume failed to get the target in the work plane. The Rover Planners figure that it could take several attempts to acquire such a tiny target. So the Science Team decided on Wednesday to bag it and move on to bigger fish. The decision was made to drive to the outcrop to the immediate west "Copper Cliff". On Friday we will then plan how to proceed. If lucky, we will have one of the lithologies within the work volume. If not, we will determine what we want to examine and bump to it for planning on Monday.

 

Opportunity Rover: Finished Outcrop Walk, Starting Detailed Examination of Outcrops, Looking for Clays

 

We on the MER Opportunity science team are currently doing an “outcrop walk” with Opportunity on the slopes of Cape York, a small residual part of the rim on the 20+ km diameter Endeavour crater, Mars.  This part of Cape York where we are currently exploring is where we have evidence for ancient clays and we would like to examine them. On Earth, when mapping the geology of an area, a geologist often walks around getting a general feel for what outcrops are present and what particular outcrops will be the best for sampling or for testing  a particular hypothesis.

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