[NASA] Margin’ up the Crater Rim!

[SpaceMan 0]

Mars: Perseverance (Mars 2020)

• Perseverance Home
• Science
• This is the hidden content, please

  • Sign In
  • or
  • Sign Up
• Multimedia
• Mars Missions
• The Solar System

2 min read

Margin’ up the Crater Rim!

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance conducts proximity science on the Eremita Mesa abrasion patch in the Margin Unit on Sept. 6, 2024, as it continues its traverse up the rim of Jezero Crater. Perseverance acquired the image using its Front Left Hazard Avoidance Camera A (Hazcam) on sol 1261 — Martian day 1,261 of the Mars 2020 mission — at the local mean solar time of 13:53:53.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

To conclude its exploration of the mysterious

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

before it

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

of Jezero Crater, Perseverance made one last stop this past week to investigate these strange rocks at “Eremita Mesa.”

Since beginning its steep drive up the crater rim, Perseverance has been traversing along the edge of the margin unit (the margin of the margin!), an enigmatic unit rich in carbonates, a mineral group closely linked to habitability. Here, the rover team scouted out a mound of rock called “Specter Chasm,” where Perseverance cleared away the dusty, weathered surface with its trusty abrading bit. The resulting abraded patch, called Eremita Mesa, is pictured above being investigated by Perseverance’s proximity science instruments mounted on its robotic arm. This includes taking close-up images to examine the millimeter-scale particles that make up the rock, using the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera, which functions as

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

Before the rover began exploring, investigations using orbital satellite data had suggested the margin unit rocks may have formed in several different ways. Theories the team has been exploring include that the unit formed on the shoreline of the ancient lake that once filled Jezero Crater, or instead that it was produced by volcanic processes such as pyroclastic flows or ashfall, or ancient lavas flowing into the crater. Since Perseverance

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

in September 2023, more than 350 sols ago (1 sol = 1 Mars day), the Science Team has been scouring data collected by the rover’s instruments to help constrain the unit’s origin. So far, this has remained largely a mystery, with the original rock textures potentially heavily affected by alteration since it formed more than 3 billion years ago. Perseverance has already collected three exciting samples of this curious rock unit for future Earth return:

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

and

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

and the team is hoping the data collected at Eremita Mesa could help further constrain the ancient processes on Mars that formed these strange rocks.

Next, it’s onwards and upwards for Perseverance as it faces a steep climb up the crater rim, where perhaps even more exotic and exciting rocks await!

Written by Alex Jones, Ph.D. student at Imperial College London

Share

• 
  
  
• 
  
  
• 
  
  
• 
  
  

Details

Last Updated

Sep 10, 2024

Related Terms

• This is the hidden content, please

  • Sign In
  • or
  • Sign Up

Explore More

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png">

3 min read

Sols 4300-4301: Rippled Pages

Article


6 hours ago

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png">

2 min read

Sols 4297-4299: This Way to Tungsten Hills

Article


17 hours ago

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png">

2 min read

Persevering Through the Storm

It’s dust-storm season on Mars! Over the past couple of weeks, as we ascended the…

Article


5 days ago

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From NASA

Mars

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited…

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png">

All Mars Resources

Explore this collection of Mars images, videos, resources, PDFs, and toolkits. Discover valuable content designed to inform, educate, and inspire,…

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png">

Rover Basics

Each robotic explorer sent to the Red Planet has its own unique capabilities driven by science. Many attributes of a…

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png">

Mars Exploration: Science Goals

The key to understanding the past, present or future potential for life on Mars can be found in NASA’s four…

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png">

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up