It’s been a long, hard climb, but NASA’s Perseverance rover has done it. The wheeled Mars explorer reached the rim of the Jezero Crater and paused to take in the view. The rover’s first photos from “Lookout Hill” on Dec. 10 show hills, ridges, scattered rocks and hazy skies. The rover looked over the rim and also back at its wheel tracks. This marks the beginning of a new science campaign after the rover’s adventures inside the crater.
NASA’s Perseverance rover snapped this first view over the rim of the Jezero Crater on Dec. 10 from a spot called “Lookout Hill.”
Perseverance landed in the Jezero Crater in early 2021 and has since explored an ancient river delta, found organic molecules and built up a collection of rock samples that NASA hopes to one day bring back to Earth for closer study.
“During the Jezero Crater rim climb, our rover drivers have done an amazing job negotiating some of the toughest terrain we’ve encountered since landing,” said Perseverance deputy project manager Steven Lee in a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory statement on Dec. 12.
NASA’s Perseverance rover snapped a view back down the slope of Jezero Crater. The rover’s wheel tracks show the path it took on its climb to the rim.
Mars threw plenty of challenges at Perseverance as it climbed to the rim. The rover spent 3.5 months ascending 1,640 vertical feet. It contended with 20% grades and slippery surfaces. The combination of steep and slippery meant the rover team tried various strategies to get up the incline. The planners tested backward driving, switchback driving and a route that allowed the rover to get a little more purchase.
“No Mars rover mission has tried to climb up a mountain this big this fast,” said JPL rover driver Camden Miller in late October.
It all worked out. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab posted a scenic panorama captured just days before Perseverance reached the top. The panorama highlights the steepness of the terrain the rover had to navigate.
Perseverance is now embarking on its new “Northern Rim” science campaign. NASA has already made plans for the first year of the campaign. The rover is expected to drive 4 miles overall and visit four specific spots of geologic interest. It will also collect more samples as it goes along.
New wonders await. “It marks our transition from rocks that partially filled Jezero Crater when it was formed by a massive impact about 3.9 billion years ago to rocks from deep down inside Mars that were thrown upward to form the crater rim after impact,” said Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley.
A JPL video shows the proposed path along the rim.
The first major target is “Witch Hazel Hill,” a “scientifically significant” layered outcrop. Those layers represent a peek into Mars’ past. “As we drive down the hill, we will be going back in time, investigating the ancient environments of Mars recorded in the crater rim,” said Perseverance scientist Candice Bedford of Purdue University.
The rocks the team expects to investigate during the campaign are among the oldest found anywhere in the solar system, Farley said. They can tell us a lot about early Mars and inform our understanding of early Earth. Mars and Earth are both rocky planets, though they took very different paths. Earth became habitable to life as we know it while Mars became inhospitable.
One of the rover’s big science goals is to help answer the question of whether or not Mars once hosted microbial life long ago. It has found some promising rocks, but scientists will need to check them out in person. In the meantime, Perseverance continues its explorations at a new elevation.
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