Perseverance leaps forward
Click for full resolution. The original images can be found here and here.
Click for interactive map.
Cool image time! After spending several weeks at one location at the base of the delta that flowed into Jezero Crater eons ago, the science team today put the rover Perseverance into high gear, programming it to move 684 feet in one leap forward. The move worked, so that Perseverance has now climbed up onto a terrace of that delta so that it sits at the base of one of the hills that forms the delta’s head. The panorama above shows that hill. I estimate that hill is about thirty feet high, give or take 50%.
The blue dot on the map to the right shows the rover’s position. The yellow lines show the area viewed in the panorama above. The green dot shows the location of the helicopter Ingenuity.
It is almost certain that the science team will get another core sample from this location, as it is at least one layer higher on the delta, thus providing new geology for that core to document. I am guessing unfortunately. Unlike the Curiosity science team (which posts updates at least one to three times a week), the Perseverance science team posts updates at best only once a week, if that, and those posts have rarely provided information about the team’s future plans.
The panorama above is cool, but what prompted this post is the image below that the rover took after arriving at this location.
Click for full image.
The picture to the right, reduced to post here, was snapped by the rover’s front left hazard avoidance camera and looks back at the terrain behind Perseverance after it had completed its long drive.
Because this is a hazard avoidance camera, it is designed to show the ground up close to the rover. Normally these pictures are not that interesting, from my tourist perspective. This image however caught my eye because of the pointy scattered rocks and boulders. Almost certainly these rocks fell from the cliff seen in the panorama, but their random almost alien placement on this bare lifeless plain illustrated starkly for me the alienness of Mars. As much as some of its landscape might remind one of the deserts of the American southwest, the similarity is only superficial, and barely that. Mars’ low gravity, thin atmosphere, and below freezing climate has shaped this land in ways entirely unique onto itself.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Click for full resolution. The original images can be found here and here.
Click for interactive map.
Cool image time! After spending several weeks at one location at the base of the delta that flowed into Jezero Crater eons ago, the science team today put the rover Perseverance into high gear, programming it to move 684 feet in one leap forward. The move worked, so that Perseverance has now climbed up onto a terrace of that delta so that it sits at the base of one of the hills that forms the delta’s head. The panorama above shows that hill. I estimate that hill is about thirty feet high, give or take 50%.
The blue dot on the map to the right shows the rover’s position. The yellow lines show the area viewed in the panorama above. The green dot shows the location of the helicopter Ingenuity.
It is almost certain that the science team will get another core sample from this location, as it is at least one layer higher on the delta, thus providing new geology for that core to document. I am guessing unfortunately. Unlike the Curiosity science team (which posts updates at least one to three times a week), the Perseverance science team posts updates at best only once a week, if that, and those posts have rarely provided information about the team’s future plans.
The panorama above is cool, but what prompted this post is the image below that the rover took after arriving at this location.
Click for full image.
The picture to the right, reduced to post here, was snapped by the rover’s front left hazard avoidance camera and looks back at the terrain behind Perseverance after it had completed its long drive.
Because this is a hazard avoidance camera, it is designed to show the ground up close to the rover. Normally these pictures are not that interesting, from my tourist perspective. This image however caught my eye because of the pointy scattered rocks and boulders. Almost certainly these rocks fell from the cliff seen in the panorama, but their random almost alien placement on this bare lifeless plain illustrated starkly for me the alienness of Mars. As much as some of its landscape might remind one of the deserts of the American southwest, the similarity is only superficial, and barely that. Mars’ low gravity, thin atmosphere, and below freezing climate has shaped this land in ways entirely unique onto itself.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News