Perseverance traverse in Jezero crater

Perseverance and Ingenuity · 2021 CE – 2026 CE · Mars

Perseverance traverse in Jezero crater — Perseverance and Ingenuity · 2021 CE – 2026 CE · Mars — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Seek signs of ancient life in a river delta and set aside samples for a return to Earth.

Historical context

Jezero held a lake fed by a river three and a half billion years ago, and its delta is the kind of place where traces of early life would be preserved if there were any. Perseverance was built not to answer that question on Mars but to choose and seal the rocks that could answer it in a laboratory on Earth. Under its belly it also carried a helicopter, to find out whether anything could fly in such thin air.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Octavia E. Butler Landing

    18 February 2021

    On 18 February 2021 the rover was lowered by sky crane onto the floor of Jezero, and the site was named for the science-fiction writer Octavia E. Butler.

  2. Wright Brothers Field

    19 April 2021

    On 19 April 2021 a helicopter of 1.8 kg rose three metres above the dust, hovered for thirty seconds and landed: the first powered flight on another planet.

  3. Séítah and the first cores

    December 2021

    In a field of dunes the rover drilled its first successful cores, out of rock that turned out to be volcanic rather than the expected lake sediment.

  4. The delta front

    2022 CE

    The rover reached the foot of a fan of sediment where a river once emptied into the crater lake, and found fine mudstone rich in organic molecules.

  5. Hogwallow Flats

    2022 CE

    Higher on the fan, layers of fine sulphate-bearing mud were cored one after another, the most promising rocks of the mission for preserved biosignatures.

  6. The depot at Three Forks

    2023 CE

    Ten sealed tubes were laid out on the ground in a careful geometric pattern, the first depot of samples ever left on another planet.

  7. Up the fan

    2024 CE

    Boulders the size of cars, carried down the valley by floods, showed that the river had run hard as well as long.

  8. Out onto the rim

    2025 CE

    After a climb of some five hundred metres the rover left Jezero altogether and began working the crater's western rim.

Outcome

Delta rocks sampled, a depot of sealed tubes left at Three Forks and the crater rim reached.

Perseverance and Ingenuity

Rover caching rock samples in Jezero crater since February 2021, and carrier of the first aircraft to fly on another planet.

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Sources

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