Perseverance Explores Ancient River Channel (Mars Report)

As NASA’s Perseverance rover prepares to ascend to the rim of Jezero Crater, its team is investigating a rock unlike any that they’ve seen so far on Mars. Deputy project scientist Katie Stack Morgan explains why this rock, found in an ancient channel that funneled water into the crater, could be among the oldest that Perseverance has investigated – or the youngest. Plus, learn how the rover is equipped to determine when rocks are formed, and get a preview of where it will journey next. NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars in 2021, with a key objective to collect and cache samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. For more information on Perseverance, visit https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

What is said in the film

The Mars Perseverance Rover is about to start climbing out of the crater it landed on, and it's exploring rocks that are amongst the oldest we've seen on Mars. Or the youngest. Join us as we investigate to find out. we're here in the Mars Yard at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This is where we test robotic prototypes as we explore Mars.

Right now, the real Perseverance Rover is in the main channel that once fed Jezero Crater. Picture rushing water carrying big boulders and sediment as it filled the crater. But getting there was a slog. It was slow going through an area called the Margin Unit, which is really rocky and hilly. But once we got out of the rocks, we passed through a dune field, and it has been smooth sailing ever since.

Now that we're in the channel, we're seeing things we've never seen before, like this interesting boulder pile. Can you tell which rock is not like the others? We want to know what is this rock and where did it come from? Many of the boulders we see at the Martian surface represent ancient lava flows that have broken up and eroded over time. But a rock like this one might have come from deeper in the crust, and could be amongst the oldest rocks we've seen or studied on Mars.

It could also have come from the ancient rocks exposed nearby in the crater rim, which we're about to explore before we get to the rim, though. We're making a stop at a site called Bright Angel. The rocks there could contain sediments deposited by one of the last bursts of water into the crater, and could be amongst the youngest rocks we've looked at yet. Perseverance is equipped with cameras, geochemistry instruments and an underground radar. We're going to use observations from these instruments to determine how and when these rocks formed.

And depending on what we find, we may decide to sample these rocks. Whether bright Angel is older or younger than what we've seen before in the crater, these rocks could be an important bookend to our Jezero sample collection. With Jezero in the rearview mirror, I'm most looking forward to this next phase of exploration on the crater rim.

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