NASA’s Perseverance rover begins its most important part of its mission on Mars. On Tuesday, the six-wheeled robot will begin the ascent of an ancient delta in the crater where it landed. It will roll uphill, stopping every now and then to examine rocks that seem to have the best chance of discovering evidence of past life on the planet.
“The delta in Jezero Crater is the main target of Perseverance,” said Deputy Project Director Dr. Katie Stack Morgan. “These are the rocks that we think have the greatest potential to hold signs of ancient life. In addition, they can also tell us about Mars’ climate and how it has evolved over time,” Stack told BBC News.
The rover made its spectacular landing in the center of the 45 km wide Jezero crater on Mars on February 18 last year. Since then he has tested his instruments, flew an experimental mini-helicopter and got a general impression of his surroundings.
But the robot’s main goal has always been to study the huge mountain of sediments to the west of Jezero. It has long been suspected to be a delta based on satellite imagery, but the first observations of Perseverance on the ground have now confirmed this assessment.
A delta is a structure of branches of a river before it flows into the sea or into a large lake or desert. In Jezero’s case, it was likely a crater-shaped lake that existed billions of years ago.
Mission in 2030
“The rover has an amazing array of instruments that can tell us something about the chemistry, mineralogy and structure of the delta. He will do this by examining the sediments down to the scale of a grain of salt,” said mission scientist Professor Briony Horgan of Purdue University in Indiana. “We’ll learn more about the chemistry of this ancient lake, whether the water was acidic or neutral, whether it was a habitable environment and what life might have been in it.”
To be clear, no one knows if life ever originated on Mars. But if so, the three or four rocks the Perseverance is drilling up on its way back may shed some light.
The rover itself is unlikely to be able to identify life with its own hands, according to the scientists, so it will leave the excavated rocks in a central spot in the crater. In 2030, NASA will send a mission to bring the rocks to Earth for further research.
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