NASA's Mars probe perseverance began its next character after completing its long-range scientific activities in Lake enchanted last week. Lake enchanted is a fine layered rock exposure area that may represent some of the lowest sediments in the delta. The rover goes east around the large sand dune ripples and then north to Yingzui gorge, where the team hopes to collect our first set of delta samples and finally climb to the front of the delta.
Over the past week, Jezero crater's plans have focused on driving progress through additional Reconnaissance Imaging and supporting future Mars Sample Return plans. After the recent anomaly, the team was able to re-establish communication with the ingenuity Mars UAV and continue to collect and analyze data.
Mars perseverance sol 424 - rock image of the enchanted Lake taken by the mastcam-z camera on the right
Perseverance is expected to reach our first planned location, devils tanyard, in the next few solar days. There, the rover's exploration tool wipes a new surface, allowing scientists to visually and instrumentally survey rocks at close range and identify potential sampling sites. This will be the first of five close science sites when it rises along the delta to a place called rocky top.
After completing the first half of the visit, the perseverance planned to go down to three carefully selected sites for sampling. Through these three pairs of samples, the research team hopes to add a set of fine-grained clay bearing mudstones to the Martian collection. These mudstones are good candidates for preserving organic matter and potential ancient microorganisms, as well as coarser grained sandstone, so as to investigate the material washed down from outside jezelo and limit the time to detect past Lake activities to a certain range.
With each Rover driving and sampling, the research team continued to understand the crater that once had water and pieced together stories written on Martian rocks.