NASA has revealed new images of the Perseverance robot exploring Mars.
The Perseverance rover has been studying the planet Mars for several years, alongside the Curiosity rover. Since its arrival, it has been progressing on Martian soil but at a very slow speed, 0.12 km/h. Since February 2021, he has traveled nearly 30km, collecting around twenty samples, whether rocks, shards or sand. Its aim is in particular to look for signs of past life.
Recently, Perseverance finished scouring the bottom of the 45km wide Jezero crater, and is now climbing its western edge to rise and head towards other corners of the planet. When Perseverance reaches the top of the crater, it will arrive at a point called “Lookout Hill”. Then, he will travel 450 meters to “Witch Hazel Hill”, a surprising place which contains light-colored rocks.
Scientists are eager to compare this location with “where Perseverance discovered and sampled the Chevaya Falls rock”, which had intrigued by its connection to an ancient life form. It “exhibited chemical signatures and structures that could have been formed by life billions of years ago, when the area explored by the rover contained flowing water.”
During this trip, the rover stopped halfway up, at a point the mission team calls “Faraway Rock,” to photograph the view of the crater. NASA then shared these images. They allow you to discover the crater seen from above as well as the entire journey taken by the rover. They also reveal the traces he left in the soil of the red planet.
“If you look at the right side of the mosaic, you start to get an idea of what we’re dealing with. Mars didn’t want to make it easier to access the top of that ridge,” says Rick Welch, deputy director of the Perseverance project, from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. A slope of around 20 degrees is, in fact, present on the right side, a difference in altitude already overcome by the robot but not on such a slippery and sandy slope. With this difficulty, the robot should not reach the summit before early December.
