- 4353 - MARS - explored by Perseverance Rover? - Perseverance rover celebrates 1,000 Mars days on the Red Planet. The car-sized robot landed on February 18, 2021. The car-sized Perseverance has now been exploring its exotic environs for 1,000 Mars days, or sols. “One sol” is slightly longer than an Earth day, 24 hours and 37 minutes.
------------------- 4353 - MARS - explored by Perseverance Rover?
- Perseverance and its tiny robotic partner,
the “Ingenuity” helicopter, landed inside Mars' Jezero Crater. Ever since, the
big rover has been hunting for signs of ancient Mars life on the floor of the
28-mile-wide Jezero.
-
- Jezero Crater was picked as the landing
site because orbital imagery showed a delta, clear evidence that a large lake
once filled the crater. A lake is a
potentially habitable environment, and delta rocks are a great environment for
entombing signs of ancient life as fossils in the geologic record.
-
- That history begins about four billion
years ago, when an asteroid impact formed the crater. Perseverance has found that Jezero's floor
is made of volcanic rock. Sandstones and mudstones atop that basal layer show
that a river started flowing into Jezero, and depositing sediments there, a few
hundred million years after the crater's formation.
-
- That flow eventually formed a large
lake. One that got as wide as 22 miles,
with a maximum depth of perhaps 100 feet.
The delta is also studded with boulders, which originated outside Jezero
carried in by powerful torrents.
-
- Perseverance is also collecting and caching
samples, which will be returned to Earth by a joint NASA-European Space Agency
campaign in the 2030s, if all goes according to plan.
-
- The rover's sample tally is now up to
23, And, the haul includes some very
intriguing bits of Red Planet material.
One sample called 'Lefroy Bay' contains a large quantity of fine-grained
silica, a material known to preserve ancient fossils on Earth.
-
- Another, 'Otis Peak,' holds a significant
amount of phosphate, which is often associated with life as we know it. Both of
these samples are also rich in carbonate, which can preserve a record of the
environmental conditions from when the rock was formed.
-
- Ingenuity is celebrating the 1,000-sol milestone
too, of course, and the 4-pound chopper's staying power is a bit surprising.
Ingenuity is a technology demonstrator; its prime mission called for a
five-flight campaign, to show that aerial exploration is possible on Mars
despite the planet's thin atmosphere.
-
- Ingenuity aced that task in the spring of
2021, then was granted a mission extension to serve as a scout for
Perseverance. The rotorcraft has completed a whopping 62 flights on this
extended mission so far, and it remains active to this day.
-
-
February 12, 2024 MARS
- explored by Perseverance Rover?
4353
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------- Comments appreciated and Pass it on to
whomever is interested. ---
--- Some reviews are at: -------------- http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
-- email feedback, corrections, request for
copies or Index of all reviews
--- to:
------
jamesdetrick@comcast.net
------ “Jim Detrick” -----------
--------------------- --- Wednesday, February 14,
2024
---------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment