NASA Perseverance rover captured stunning imagery of an area called "Airey Hill" in Jezero Crater on the Red Planet. Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley gives you a tour.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS; ESA/DLR/FU-Berlin
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS; ESA/DLR/FU-Berlin
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TechTranscript
00:00 [ Music ]
00:04 After a thousand sunrises on Mars,
00:06 here's where NASA's Perseverance rover is exploring now.
00:09 A river environment, billions of years old,
00:11 that tells a dynamic story of the forces that shaped it.
00:15 Let's take a tour of this area
00:16 and see where we'll send the rover next.
00:19 Perseverance is exploring Jezero Quater,
00:22 where an ancient lake and river system once existed.
00:25 If microbes ever lived here,
00:26 signs of them could be preserved in these rocks.
00:30 About three and a half billion years ago,
00:32 a river carved a canyon through the crater rim,
00:34 filling the crater with water
00:35 and depositing sand and rocks that formed a delta.
00:39 On Earth, the record of such an ancient river and lake
00:41 would have been erased long ago.
00:43 That's why sending a robotic explorer
00:45 like Perseverance is so valuable.
00:47 Mars is a special place that preserves a unique record
00:49 of things that happened in the first billion years
00:51 of the solar system.
00:55 In this area, different rock layers
00:56 record different parts of the crater's history.
00:59 The flat, light-colored rocks were deposited
01:01 on the banks of a river,
01:02 flowing slowly across the landscape.
01:04 The boulders in the distance were deposited later
01:07 in what was likely a raging torrent.
01:09 And if this peculiar outcrop caught your attention,
01:13 it did ours as well.
01:14 It doesn't look like sediment at all.
01:16 Perhaps it's a remnant of a lava flow,
01:18 now mostly eroded away.
01:20 Lab equipment on Earth can accurately measure
01:21 when a volcanic rock was formed.
01:23 So if we can return a sample of this lava
01:25 to Earth in the future,
01:26 we may know when and for how long water flowed into Jezero.
01:30 From here, Perseverance will continue west.
01:35 In the distance, you can trace the tops
01:37 of the natural levees that formed
01:38 at the near and far banks of the river.
01:40 The rover will pass this area on its way upstream,
01:49 continuing toward this spot
01:50 where the river carved through the crater wall.
01:52 You can see the canyon on the horizon here.
01:54 From there, Perseverance will be well-positioned
02:01 to head south and ascend this natural ramp
02:04 that leads up and out of the crater.
02:06 We're lucky to have a route the rover can safely drive
02:08 up the rim right where we need it.
02:10 Starting the climb would mark a new
02:12 and exciting phase of the mission,
02:14 exploring rocks far older than those in Jezero
02:17 and produced in an entirely different way.
02:19 One tempting target are these light-colored rocks
02:21 partway up the rim.
02:23 They may have interacted with hot water
02:25 in a hydrothermal environment,
02:26 another exciting place to hunt for evidence of past life.
02:29 Since finishing its study of the crater floor,
02:33 Perseverance has been climbing the delta
02:35 and piecing together the history
02:36 of this once watery environment.
02:38 We've come a long way in nearly three years
02:40 of exploring and collecting samples,
02:42 but there's still so much more to investigate.
02:45 Follow the journey at mars.nasa.gov/perseverance.
02:49 (upbeat music)
02:51 (upbeat music)
02:54 (upbeat music)
02:56 [BLANK_AUDIO]