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
00:00After a thousand sunrises on Mars, here's where NASA's Perseverance rover is exploring
00:08now.
00:09A river environment, billions of years old, that tells a dynamic story of the forces that
00:13shaped it.
00:14Let's take a tour of this area and see where we'll send the rover next.
00:20Perseverance is exploring Jezero Crater, where an ancient lake and river system once existed.
00:25If microbes ever lived here, signs of them could be preserved in these rocks.
00:30About 3.5 billion years ago, a river carved a canyon through the crater rim, filling the
00:34crater with water and depositing sand and rocks that formed a delta.
00:39On Earth, the record of such an ancient river and lake would have been erased long ago.
00:43That's why sending a robotic explorer like Perseverance is so valuable.
00:47Mars is a special place that preserves a unique record of things that happened in the first
00:51billion years of the solar system.
00:55In this area, different rock layers record different parts of the crater's history.
00:59The flat, light-colored rocks were deposited on the banks of a river, flowing slowly across
01:03the landscape.
01:05The boulders in the distance were deposited later, in what was likely a raging torrent.
01:10And if this peculiar outcrop caught your attention, it did ours as well.
01:14It doesn't look like sediment at all.
01:16Perhaps it's a remnant of a lava flow, now mostly eroded away.
01:20Lab equipment on Earth can accurately measure when a volcanic rock was formed, so if we
01:24can return a sample of this lava to Earth in the future, we may know when and for how
01:28long water flowed into Jezero.
01:33From here, Perseverance will continue west.
01:35In the distance, you can trace the tops of the natural levees that formed at the near
01:39and far banks of the river.
01:46The rover will pass this area on its way upstream, continuing toward this spot, where the river
01:51carved through the crater wall.
01:52You can see the canyon on the horizon here.
01:59From there, Perseverance will be well-positioned to head south and descend this natural ramp
02:04that leads up and out of the crater.
02:06We're lucky to have a route the rover can safely drive up the rim, right where we need it.
02:11Starting the climb would mark a new and exciting phase of the mission, exploring rocks far
02:15older than those in Jezero and produced in an entirely different way.
02:20One tempting target are these light-colored rocks partway up the rim.
02:23They may have interacted with hot water in a hydrothermal environment, another exciting
02:27place to hunt for evidence of past life.
02:31Since finishing its study of the crater floor, Perseverance has been climbing the delta and
02:35piecing together the history of this once watery environment.
02:38We've come a long way in nearly three years of exploring and collecting samples, but there's
02:42still so much more to investigate.
02:45Follow the journey at mars.nasa.gov slash perseverance.