1 Like
NASA's Mars Exploration Program (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Sol 1399: What ‘Perseverance’ Means on Mars and for Our NASA Family
The panorama is made up of 102 individual Mastcam-Z images stitched together. The images were taken on Sols 1399 (Jan. 26, 2025).
Perseverance is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as the “continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties, failure, or opposition.” The Mars 2020 rover team has truly embodied the rover’s namesake — from working together to launch the Perseverance rover during a global pandemic, to navigating the impact of the recent California wildfires. Over the last month, members of the rover’s family at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech have faced many challenges due to these wildfires.
Things have been a little slow on Mars as Perseverance patiently waits for its earthly friends to recover during such challenging times. (Note: Nominal operations resumed this week.) This quiet period has allowed the rover to reflect on the many accomplishments of the Mars 2020 mission over several years since landing in Jezero crater. These accomplishments range from discovering volcanic rocks and sampling ancient lake beds to investigating rocks with possible biosignatures.
Despite the challenges back on Earth, Perseverance still has much to look forward to this year. Looking ahead, the rover’s exploration of the crater rim continues to be an exciting endeavor as Perseverance ventures into uncharted Martian territories. Exploration of the crater rim will involve the analysis of more intriguing rocks to understand the geological history of Mars and its potential for past life. The rover is approaching Witch Hazel Hill, an exciting area of interest for its potential to host some of the oldest exposed Mars bedrock, and will use a variety of instrument techniques to explore the many layers of rock exposed here. This may be the rover’s chance to explore ancient rocks that were uplifted and exposed during the impact that created Jezero crater. These rocks may reveal key information about Mars’ ancient climate history and the formation of Mars’ early crust.
During Perseverance’s investigation of the crater rim, the rover will add to its out-of-this-world rock collection. Each rock can tell a story about its past, leveraging insights into whether there was a body of water, a nearby volcano, or the possibility of microbial life. On the crater rim, Perseverance is searching for rocks that are more than 4 billion years old — unique to Mars since most materials that old on Earth have been altered or destroyed by the planet’s recycling system (plate tectonics). The rover is also interested in collecting samples from hydrothermal systems or impact melt. Don’t ask the rover what its favorite rock is because it won’t tell you — Perseverance says it loves them all!
Perseverance is ready to “rover-come” any challenges this year and looks forward to embarking on its continued journey onto the crater rim. The rover would not be able to accomplish these incredible feats without the guidance and support of its internationally distributed operations team. While our team members regroup, heal, and work together to rebuild here on Earth, Perseverance waits patiently, ready to continue its journey on the Red Planet.
Written by Margaret Deahn, Ph.D. student, and Stephanie Connell, Ph.D. candidate, at Purdue University A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust). Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis. The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover. Other panoramas of Mars by Perseverance rover:
...
Welcome to Earth! It's a planet having an iron core, with two-thirds of its surface covered by water. Earth orbits a local star called the Sun, the light of which generates the food supply for all the millions of species of life on earth. The dominant species on Earth is the human being, and you're one of the six billion of them! Humans have iron in their blood, and their bodies are composed of two-thirds water, just like the planet they live on. The physical composition of the Earth, its people and everything on it contains an electro-magnetic field which is not yet fully understood. Theories and legends about the origin of Earth, people and life itself abound, however they are not commonly discussed. The bulk of earth's people spend their time immersed in daily activities, leaving the big questions for later. "Who are we? Where did we come from? Where are we going? How will we get there?" Many religions and philosophies have attempted to answer these questions over the years, but so far none has given an answer that everyone on the planet can accept. In contrast to all the disagreement, the similarities among people on earth are far, far greater than any differences. Welcome again to Earth! Enjoy your stay, and try to stay calm.
