NASA’s Perseverance Explorer is looking for interesting Martian rocks

NASA’s Mars Orbiter has begun exploring an area the science team calls the “Yuri Corridor” near the river delta floor of ancient Jezero crater. They were excited to explore the area for several months after finding a rock similar to Perseverance’s sample collected in July.

This feature is very confusing to scientists because it is Sandstone, i.e. fine grains that have been transported from elsewhere by water before being deposited and forming rock. The Perseverance sample is key to the first step of NASA and the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars sample return campaign, which begins when the rover deposits its first drill rock in September 2021.

“We often prioritize the study of fine-grained sedimentary rocks like these in our search for potential organics and biosignatures,” said Katie Stack Morgan, deputy project scientist for Perseverance at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. . “What’s really interesting about the Yori Pass outcrop is that laterally it’s equivalent to ‘Hogwallow Flats’, where we found fine-grained sedimentary rock. This means that the bedrock is about the same height as Howwallow and has tracks on the surface.”

The search for biosignatures in Jezero Crater (any feature, element, molecule, substance, or characteristic that could serve as evidence of ancient life) is one of Perseverance Crater’s four scientific goals. Along with 14 rock core samples, the rover collected an atmospheric sample and three test tubes, all stored in the rover’s belly.

After collecting samples from Yori Pass, you’ll direct Perseverance 745 feet (227 meters) southeast toward a large sand ripple. The peak sits in the middle of a small patch of sand dunes, which the science team has dubbed “Monitoring Mountain,” and will be where the probe collected its first samples of regolith, or crushed rock and dust.