Perseverance Mars rover to take a chew of ‘Krokodillen’ area

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover is exploring a brand new area of curiosity the staff is asking “Krokodillen” that will include a number of the oldest rocks on Mars. The realm has been on the Perseverance science staff’s want checklist as a result of it marks an essential boundary between the oldest rocks of Jezero Crater’s rim and people of the plains past the crater.

“The final 5 months have been a geologic whirlwind,” mentioned Ken Farley, deputy challenge scientist for Perseverance from Caltech in Pasadena. “As profitable as our exploration of ‘Witch Hazel Hill’ has been, our investigation of Krokodillen guarantees to be simply as compelling.”

Named by Perseverance mission scientists after a mountain ridge on the island of Prins Karls Forland, Norway, Krokodillen (which suggests “the crocodile” in Norwegian) is a 73-acre (about 30-hectare) plateau of rocky outcrops situated downslope to the west and south of Witch Hazel Hill.

A fast earlier investigation into the area revealed the presence of clays on this historic bedrock. As a result of clays require liquid water to type, they supply essential clues concerning the setting and habitability of early Mars. The detection of clays elsewhere inside the Krokodillen area would reinforce the concept ample liquid water was current someday within the distant previous, seemingly earlier than Jezero Crater was fashioned by the influence of an asteroid. Clay minerals are additionally identified on Earth for preserving natural compounds, the constructing blocks of life.

“If we discover a potential biosignature right here, it might most definitely be from a completely completely different and far earlier epoch of Mars evolution than the one we discovered final 12 months within the crater with ‘Cheyava Falls,'” mentioned Farley, referring to a rock sampled in July 2024 with chemical signatures and constructions that might have been fashioned by life way back. “The Krokodillen rocks fashioned earlier than Jezero Crater was created, throughout Mars’s earliest geologic interval, the Noachian, and are among the many oldest rocks on Mars.”

Information collected from NASA’s Mars orbiters recommend that the outer edges of Krokodillen may additionally have areas wealthy in olivine and carbonate. Whereas olivine types from magma, carbonate minerals on Earth sometimes type throughout a response in liquid water between rock and dissolved carbon dioxide. Carbonate minerals on Earth are identified to be wonderful preservers of fossilized historic microbial life and recorders of historic local weather.

The rover, which celebrated its 1,five hundredth day of floor operations on Could 9, is presently analyzing a rocky outcrop in Krokodillen known as “Copper Cove” that will include Noachian rocks.

Rating Mars rocks

The rover’s arrival at Krokodillen comes with a brand new sampling technique for the nuclear-powered rover that permits for leaving some cored samples unsealed in case the mission finds a extra scientifically compelling geologic characteristic down the highway.

So far, Perseverance has collected and sealed two regolith (crushed rock and mud) samples, three witness tubes, and one atmospheric pattern. It has additionally collected 26 rock cores and sealed 25 of them. The rover’s one unsealed pattern is its most up-to-date, a rock core taken on April 28 that the staff named “Bell Island,” which accommodates small spherical stones known as spherules. If sooner or later the science staff decides a brand new pattern ought to take its place, the rover could possibly be commanded to take away the tube from its bin in storage and dump the earlier pattern.

“We now have been exploring Mars for over 4 years, and each single stuffed pattern tube we’ve on board has its personal distinctive and compelling story to inform,” mentioned Perseverance performing challenge scientist Katie Stack Morgan of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “There are seven empty pattern tubes remaining and loads of open highway in entrance of us, so we will maintain a number of tubes—together with the one containing the Bell Island core—unsealed for now. This technique permits us most flexibility as we proceed our assortment of numerous and compelling rock samples.”

Earlier than the mission adopted its new technique, the engineering pattern staff assessed whether or not leaving a tube unsealed might diminish the standard of a pattern. The reply was no.

“The setting contained in the rover met very strict requirements for cleanliness when the rover was constructed. The tube can be oriented in such a approach inside its particular person storage bin that the chance of extraneous materials getting into the tube throughout future actions, together with sampling and drives, could be very low,” mentioned Stack Morgan.

As well as, the staff assessed whether or not remnants of a pattern that was dumped might “contaminate” a later pattern.

“Though there’s a probability that any materials remaining within the tube from the earlier pattern might are available in contact with the surface of a brand new pattern,” mentioned Stack Morgan, “it’s a very minor concern—and a worthwhile change for the chance to gather the very best and most compelling samples after we discover them.”