Written by Eleanor Moreland, a student collaborator at Rice University
During the past month, the perseverance was exploring the Krokodilllen Plateau in search of the rocks carrying the paint. A previous blog discussed that these rocks can carry evidence for the water of Mars, and that perseverance explores potential multiple sites to find a suitable goal for the sample. When a goal can be found to roam in the previous bump, the science team decided to return to the “TopSail” main site. In one campaign to this region, the perseverance led 411.7 meters (1,350.7 feet, or slightly more than a quarter of a mile) – the longest car carried out by an automatic vehicle on another planet. Go, Percy, go!
Once again in the area near “Main Topsail” and “Salmon Point”, the team tried to ignore and take samples of rocks carrying paint in a few different goals. These rocks, however, prove very broken and difficult to take samples and sincerity. The perseverance has seen great rocks before, such as during the front campaign of fans within Jezero Crate. In this scenario and this scenario, scientific and engineering teams work together to find goals of a top priority and create rocks that can withstand corrosion and assembly. In this case, the team decided to return to a previous erosion site, “Strong island”, To take samples from the rock that we already gathered and analyzed. This corrosion showed the signing of the strong clay that the team is looking for, and we will make another attempt to cross this week.
Last week, the perseverance team hosted very distinguished visitors, Madeleine and Joshua, and had a unique honor by fulfilling their wishes through Make-A-Wish Foundation. During their visits to JPL, Madeline and Joshua were named at the members of the Funder Mars 2020 operations team. They visited the Rovers test at JPL Mars Yard, and saw data arrived from Rover with the perseverance team, and attended a meeting of planning in Rover, and cooperating with members of the Science and Engineering team on the campus. Madeleine and Joshua forever will be connected to the mission of Mars 2020, as each of them chose the name of one of our planning goals. The goal of Madeleine, “Jigging Cove”, was a goal for MASTCAM-Z and Supercam “All Techniques”, including LIBS, VISIR and RMI. The choice of Joshua, “Witnesses”, will be used for the next pits. Moving forward in the flexibility showed by Madeleine and Joshua, you will try to persevere in the mud rich before continuing the investigation along the edge of Jezero Crate.