Skip to main content

Perseverance rover begins exploration of ancient river delta on Mars

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.”

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.

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
NASA orbiter captures one last image of retired InSight lander on Mars
This illustration shows NASA's InSight spacecraft with its instruments deployed on the Martian surface.

NASA's Insight lander spent four years on the surface of Mars, uncovering secrets of the planet's interior, but it eventually succumbed to the most martian of environmental threats: dust. Mars has periodic dust storms that can whip up into huge global events, lifting dust up into the air and then dumping it on everything in sight -- including solar panels. After years of accumulation, eventually the dust was so thick that Insight's solar panels could no longer generate enough power to keep it operational, and the mission officially came to an end in December 2022.

That wasn't quite the end of the story for InSight, though, as it is still being used for science to this day, albeit indirectly. Recently, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) caught a glimpse of InSight from orbit, capturing the lander's dusty surroundings and showing how even more dust had built up on it.

Read more
NASA’s Mars rover just emerged from Jezero Crater. So, what next?
Perseverance's view from the rim of Mars' Jezero Crater

NASA personnel are celebrating the news that its Perseverance rover has finally reached the top of the Mars’ Jezero Crater rim after a challenging climb that took three-and-a-half months to complete.

The six-wheeled rover ascended 1,640 feet (500 meters) and made stops along the way to conduct various science observations as it continues its search for signs of ancient microbial life on the red planet.

Read more
NASA learns how the Ingenuity helicopter ended up crashing on Mars
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, right, stands near the apex of a sand ripple in an image taken by Perseverance on Feb. 24, 2024, about five weeks after the rotorcraft’s final flight. Part of one of Ingenuity’s rotor blades lies on the surface about 49 feet (15 meters) west of helicopter (at left in image).

Earlier this year, the NASA helicopter Ingenuity came to the end of its mission after an incredible 72 flights on Mars. The helicopter flew a remarkable 30 times farther than planned, and was the first rotocopter to fly on another planet, proving that exploring distant worlds from the air is possible. Now, NASA has revealed new details about what exactly caused the crash that brought the mission to an end, and what it learned about flying helicopters for future missions.

The final flight of Ingenuity took place on January 18, 2024, when the helicopter rose briefly into the air in a maneuver called a hop. The helicopter was fitted with a number of cameras, and shadows cast onto the planet's surface revealed that one of the helicopter's rotor blades was missing, having apparently separated at the mast. But it wasn't certain what had caused this damage.

Read more