Perseverance takes its first good look west at its future journey
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and enhanced to post here, was taken today by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Perseverance. Though I am not 100% certain, I think this picture looks almost due west, and is aimed not only at the rover’s near term target, Witch Hazel Hill, but the rover’s long term and very important goal, the Nils Fossae ridge and canyon that appears to be crack formed during the impact that created giant 745-mile-wide Isidis Basin. Jezero Crater sits on the western rim of that impact basin.
The rover team expects to reach Witch Hazel Hill within days. To get there quickly the team has moved the rover more than a thousand feet west and dropped down from the rim about 170 feet in just the past ten days.
Click for interactive map.
The blue dot on the overview map to the right marks Peseverance’s location after these travels. The yellow lines are my guess as to the area covered by the picture above. The white dotted line marks the rover’s previous travels, while the red dotted line its planned route.
At some point the rover team will upgrade the resolution on the interactive map of the territory west of Jezero Crater, because Perseverance will be spending most of its future there, exploring a region that orbital data says is very rich in minerals and likely to become important for mining.
Nils Fossae is especially rich in these minerals but as it sits about forty miles away, it is probably too far for the rover to reach. However the entire landscape in between has great mining potential, so that isn’t a great problem.
As rich as this region is for mining, note its barrenness. Practically nowhere on Earth would you be able to take such a picture and not see some evidence of life. Mars is truly alien, and to colonize it will be the greatest challenge humans will ever undertake.
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. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
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 original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and enhanced to post here, was taken today by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Perseverance. Though I am not 100% certain, I think this picture looks almost due west, and is aimed not only at the rover’s near term target, Witch Hazel Hill, but the rover’s long term and very important goal, the Nils Fossae ridge and canyon that appears to be crack formed during the impact that created giant 745-mile-wide Isidis Basin. Jezero Crater sits on the western rim of that impact basin.
The rover team expects to reach Witch Hazel Hill within days. To get there quickly the team has moved the rover more than a thousand feet west and dropped down from the rim about 170 feet in just the past ten days.
Click for interactive map.
The blue dot on the overview map to the right marks Peseverance’s location after these travels. The yellow lines are my guess as to the area covered by the picture above. The white dotted line marks the rover’s previous travels, while the red dotted line its planned route.
At some point the rover team will upgrade the resolution on the interactive map of the territory west of Jezero Crater, because Perseverance will be spending most of its future there, exploring a region that orbital data says is very rich in minerals and likely to become important for mining.
Nils Fossae is especially rich in these minerals but as it sits about forty miles away, it is probably too far for the rover to reach. However the entire landscape in between has great mining potential, so that isn’t a great problem.
As rich as this region is for mining, note its barrenness. Practically nowhere on Earth would you be able to take such a picture and not see some evidence of life. Mars is truly alien, and to colonize it will be the greatest challenge humans will ever undertake.
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. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. 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
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