NASA’s Endurance Rover has left Mount Washburn and is on its way to its next destination, Bright Angel. There, he found an unusual shape that scientists called a ‘popcorn rock‘. Batu Tasin proves that there is water in Kawah Jezero. Patience focuses on life on ancient Mars. While searching for fossil evidence of ancient life, he searched and tried to understand the environment that could support life.
That’s why it’s in Jezero Crater, an ancient paleolake with sedimentary delta and other interesting geological features. In the Sol 1175 mission, the expedition arrived at Bright Angel, an interesting scientific area that is part of the river channel that drains into Jezero Crater.
Ightagty Angel is characterized by light-toned rocks that are either ancient sediments that fill the channels or old rocks exposed by the river.
The image below shows the rover’s path to Bright Angel. The white part shows where Sabar is similar to the Neretva Vallis river channel, and the blue part shows where it crosses the channel. The stones of Ightag Angel were clearly visible.
As Patience heads towards Bright Angel, mission personnel can see a light rock in the distance. But the road to the new destination was not easy. The rover ran into a rocky area so difficult that the operator had to change course.
“We started fitting the channel in late January and made good progress, but then the rocks got bigger,” said Evan Graser, Perseverance’s deputy strategic path planner at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
“On the day of March, the driver averaged more than a hundred yards down dozens of yards. It’s disappointing.”
Patience has two ways of traveling. In rougher terrain, route planning teams use images to plan vehicle routes up to 30 meters at a time. The team relies on Perseverance’s autopilot mode, called AutoNav, to navigate more than one left.
But when going through rocky terrain gets tougher, AutoNav struggles. Sometimes only the safest option is retained. But that meant Bright Angel’s drive took longer than expected.
Graser says “When we leave, we are looking in the river channel in the north, hoping we will find a part where the hole can pass between a small car and a long distance, because the hole is known to eat Mars cars,I need an entry where I can safely travel with patience. When the picture shows two, we tag him.”
The rover was guided through the dome and the river channel, reducing its drive for several weeks.
Patience is nearing the end of the fourth science round. He is looking for carbonate rocks and olivine in the Margin section, which is located inside the rim of Jezero Crater. But he hoped to find a different stone in Bright Angel.
Geologists were shocked by what they saw, according to a NASA press release. Some stones are solid and spheres, giving it the name ‘popcorn stone’.
This image shows a sedimentary area of ​​light colored rock with an unusual ‘popcorn’ like texture and many mineral veins. NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover captured this image with its Right Mastcam-Z camera. This image was taken on June 10, 2024 (Sol 1175) at 14:04:57 local time. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
The rocks are also full of veins that look like mineral veins. Mineral veins occur when water transports minerals through rock and deposits them.
Mineral veins are abundant in wet, watery earth, and the rover has found them elsewhere on Mars. Popcorn properties can make it water proof. Like mineral veins, these indicate the flow of water through the rock.
The next step is to determine what minerals are in these popcorn rocks. Patience will grow into an Angel of Light, taking measurements as it goes.
He will use holiday tools and other tools to look closer. It will vaporize a portion of the rock and use the SuperCam suite of instruments to examine the rock’s chemistry.
Ultimately, the decision to take samples back to Earth will (hopefully) depend on those results. The rover will leave after the mission is completed at Bright Angel
