Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. News

Perseverance rover begins exploration of ancient river delta on Mars

By

The Perseverance rover has begun exploring one of the most exciting areas of Mars: The delta in the Jezero crater. The rover’s Delta Front Campaign began on April 18, searching the site of an ancient river delta where it can learn more about the history of water on Mars and could even find evidence of ancient microbial life if it ever existed there.

“We’ve been eyeing the delta from a distance for more than a year while we explored the crater floor,” said Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist from Caltech, as the rover was approaching the delta. “At the end of our fast traverse, we are finally able to get close to it, obtaining images of ever-greater detail revealing where we can best explore these important rocks.”

Perseverance looks towards the Delta on Sol 419, capturing this image with its Right Navigation Camera.
Perseverance looks towards the Delta on Sol 419, capturing this image with its Right Navigation Camera. NASA/JPL-Caltech

After driving at top speed to reach the delta from its previous location on the crater floor, the rover can now begin its twin aims of taking science readings of the area and also drilling and collecting samples for retrieval and return to Earth by future missions.

Recommended Videos

“Perseverance will rove 130 feet (40 meters) up and over the delta, drill cores along the way, and characterize the layered sedimentary rocks that make up the delta,” Denise Buckner, a Student Collaborator on Perseverance at the University of Florida explained. “These sediments were deposited billions of years ago, when water flowed across the surface of Mars and a river drained into the ancient crater below. If Mars did host life during this time, remnants or signatures of those organisms could be preserved in some of these ancient rocks.”

Related

This part of the rover’s mission is set to last around six months, and looking at the sedimentary layers will help researchers to understand the geological history of this particular region. In addition, when the river flowed on the surface of Mars billions of years ago, it carried with it rocks from all over the region, so collecting samples from here is like being able to look at samples from a much wider area.

Perseverance is currently heading through an area called Cannery Passage which runs between the crater floor and the delta, and the team on the ground will be analyzing images and other data to decide which path the rover should take next as it moves up the delta itself.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
Yes, Perseverance is exploring an ancient lake bed but no, it hasn’t found signs of life (yet)
The Jezero Crater on Mars, showing a delta where an ancient lake was once located.

A new study shows exciting results about the Jezero Crater on Mars, where the Perseverance rover is currently exploring -- but despite what some headlines suggest, Perseverance hasn't yet found evidence of life on the red planet.

The Jezero Crater is the most exciting place on Mars and was deliberately chosen for the Perseverance rover to explore because it's the best guess scientists have at a location that could potentially have hosted microbial life billions of years ago. What makes the crater so special is the large delta that exists there, which is thought to have been an ancient wetland. An ancient lake is believed to have existed in the crater long ago -- which would make it a hospitable place for life to have emerged. The new research confirms that this area did indeed host a lake, but it doesn't say anything about whether there was life there.

Read more
NASA says goodbye to Mars helicopter Ingenuity after an incredible 72 flights
NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter unlocked its rotor blades, allowing them to spin freely, on April 7, 2021, the 47th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.

It's a sad day for space fans, as the plucky little helicopter Ingenuity has finally come to the end of its mission on Mars. The helicopter will not be making anymore flights due to damage to one of its rotors that occurred during a recent landing, NASA said in an announcement on Thursday, January 25.

The mission was originally planned to make just five flights and to last 30 days, but has been successful beyond what anyone had imagined. The helicopter has made a total of 72 flights over the course of its three-year mission, which began when it was set down on the surface of Mars by the Perseverance rover. The rover arrived on Mars with the helicopter tucked up underneath its belly in February 2021, and Ingenuity sat on the surface for the first time in April 2021. It then made history by becoming the first rotorcraft to fly on another planet with its maiden flight.

Read more
NASA regains communications with Mars helicopter Ingenuity
The Ingenuity helicopter is pictured on the surface of Mars.

Just a few days after losing contact with the Mars helicopter Ingenuity, NASA announced that it has regained communications with the plucky little helicopter. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which designed and operated the helicopter, announced that it is back in touch following an unexpected communications dropout.

The Ingenuity helicopter is pictured on the surface of Mars. NASA

Read more