NASA via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Beginning a new journey in NASA’s Mars exploration, the Perseverance rover will begin a months-long, steep and challenging climb up a crater, the space agency announced Wednesday.
The Perseverance rover, nicknamed “Percy,” is the centerpiece of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission and is collecting data in preparation for future human exploration of the Red Planet.
The car-sized spacecraft has spent two and a half years exploring the floor and river delta of Mars’ Jezero Crater and will begin its ascent to the western crater rim during the week of August 19.
“Perseverance has completed four science campaigns, collected 22 rock cores and traveled more than 18 miles of dirt road,” said Art Thompson, Perseverance project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, in a press release Wednesday.
“As we begin the crater rim campaign, our rover is in excellent condition and the team can’t wait to see what’s on top of this site,” Thompson added.
During what will be the rover’s “most difficult” journey to date, Perseverance will rely on its automatic navigation capabilities and will have to overcome gradients of up to 23 degrees on the pre-planned route up the crater.
When Perseverance reaches the crater, which scientists have named “Aurora Park,” the rover will have gained about 300 meters in altitude.
Researchers are excited about the new data that awaits the rover on the crater rim and say the mission expects “many more discoveries.”
Eleni Ravanis, a scientist at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa on Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z instrument team and one of the Crater Rim Campaign’s science leaders, said the results would have “significant implications” for understanding the Red Planet.
“Our samples already represent an incredibly scientifically compelling collection, but the crater rim promises to yield even more samples that will have significant implications for our understanding of Mars’ geological history,” Ravanis said in the press release.
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