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NASA NTRS2022

Cross-Cutting Flight Infrastructure Improvements on M2020

Mars2020 (M2020) was formulated as a mission that leveraged as much Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) heritage as possible, while focusing major new development efforts on the original and unique elements needed to accomplish the different mission objectives. Well publicized examples of high profile new developments include precision landing, the sampling and caching system, the specific instrument suite, improved mobility via Autonomous Navigation, and later the addition of the Ingenuity helicopter. Less well known are the refinements to the core flight infrastructure, primarily in the cross-cutting functions of Telecom, Avionics, Data Management, Communications Behaviors, and Parameter Management. These enhancements are introduced predominately via flight software, and represent increases in capability that justified their inclusion in an otherwise heritage-focused project environment.Perseverance’s cross-cutting flight infrastructure improvements fall into and across the following five categories. First is a trimming of the software footprint of infrastructure modules, in order to make room for memory demands elsewhere in the system. Second is the minimization of data volume to be downlinked, through various methods such as the incorporation of new compression options. Third is the maximization of the available downlink bandwidth for data, by curtailing content-less data (fill) and introducing an improved UHF proximity link protocol. Fourth is a reduction in vulnerabilities, through increased file system redundancy, robustness, and software process monitoring. Fifth is an increase in operations efficiency by lowering file system mount times, improving parallelism between simultaneous events, minimizing the time to recover from file system errors, streamlining the purging of obsolete data, and reducing the number of commands to service parameters by a factor of 100.Individually, none of the cross-cutting infrastructure improvements are likely to garner headlines, but collectively they appreciably improve the safety and operability of Perseverance over its predecessor. This paper will describe the improvements, their promise, and where applicable, their actual impact in operations.

Bohannon, Emily↗
NASA NTRS2022

Electrical Ground Support Equipment for the Sampling Caching System of the Mars 2020 Rover

In this work we describe in detail the architecture, design, testing and operation of the Electrical Ground Support Equipment (EGSE) “Blue Box” used to test and validate the Sampling Caching System (SCS) of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. The Blue Box architecture is centered around COTS motor controllers and COTS input-output modules communicating over an EtherCAT bus. A custom, low-level safety subsystem ensures no harm can be done to the flight articles. The modular architecture of the EGSE reduces cost and complexity while expediting assembly time. The Blue Box drives the 19 actuators of the SCS which span the main robotic arm, the corer system, the internal sample handling arm, the sample tube sealing system and the gas dust removal tool; mimicking the Rover Motor Control Assembly (RMCA). Due to the limited availability of RMCA’s, the EGSE enabled and performed the bulk of testing activities for SCS. The majority of the SCS actuators are composed of a 3-phase DC brushless motors, hall sensors for commutation, dual resolvers for output angular measurement, brakes, heaters and platinum thermistors. Additionally, the EGSE read 12 strain gauges forming part of a force torque sensor, and switches used for external positioning references. Over the 3-year span of the V&V campaign for the SCS, over 32 EGSE systems were built, tested and deployed to test venues at JPL and externally. The EGSE tested several families of the SCS subsystem, ranging from engineering units, life test units and two flight units. Test venues that this EGSE supported included lab benches, ultra-clean cleanrooms, ATLO facilities, and thermal vacuum chambers. Together with the test software systems, SSDEV and SSDEV-ECAT, the Blue Box EGSE enabled the team to efficiently test flight hardware and flight software together. We go over the safety features and fault management techniques employed to protect flight hardware. The effects of the long, 50-feet, EGSE harnesses on motor performance, EMI, electrical noise, and motor control performance are explained. Mitigations to these unwanted effects, including shielding strategy and inductance compensation, are summarized. We go over an excerpt of notable anomalies that this EGSE suffered through its operation, along with investigations and resolutions. Lessons learned, areas of improvement as part of future work, and recommendations for future implementations for similar EGSE’s, are shared.

Levine, Dan↗
NASA NTRS2022

Validation of the Mars 2020 Fault Protection Design: Navigating the Infinity of the Off-Nominal

On July 30th 2020, the Mars 2020 mission successfully launched out of Cape Canaveral, Florida, passed through the Earth’s shadow, and began its short cruise to Mars. Less than seven months later, the Perseverance rover touched down safely in Jezero Crater to begin its ambitious mission that includes looking for signs of ancient life and collecting samples for future return to Earth. Getting to the successful landing, or “Tango Delta Nominal,” could not have been achieved without also considering the off-nominal. One of the teams supporting this ambitious mission is the fault protection (FP) team. This team is tasked with assessing the various failures, or faults, that could prevent mission success and with ensuring that the autonomous behaviors built into the software and hardware can detect faults and recover the vehicle to a safe state. As part of its charter, the FP team designed a test campaign to provide confidence in the system’s robustness to off-nominal scenarios across all of Mars 2020’s mission phases. The greatest challenge associated with designing such a validation campaign was reducing the infinite number of anomalous scenarios into a finite test suite. In addition, the tests needed to be executed efficiently in order to utilize the team’s limited test venue access, but still needed to maintain a level of rigor that guaranteed confidence in the test outcomes. Given that each test scenario generated massive amounts of data, the team also developed methods for quickly ascertaining whether the autonomous fault protection behaviors maintained vehicle safety in the presence of an anomaly. This paper summarizes the processes that the Mars 2020 fault protection team employed to execute its off-nominal validation campaign. It captures both the methods of generating a suite of off-nominal tests, as well as reducing it to a subset that can be realistically executed within schedule and resource constraints. It also describes the various processes and philosophies that the team utilized to execute the tests efficiently, including creating a standardized procedure template, keeping the test cases modular so that they could be easily interchanged, and capturing common fault injections in a change-controlled database. Finally, it will describe the tools and processes for assessing the test data, focusing in particular on a tool that evaluated vehicle state using “secondary” sources of data to validate that the software had truly configured the spacecraft to the expected safe state.

Morantz, Chaz↗
NASA NTRS2021

Assessment of M2020 Terrain Relative Landing Accuracy: Flight Performance vs Predicts

Terrain Relative Navigation (TRN) was a critical enabling Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) technology that enabled Mars 2020 mission Perseverance rover to land at Jezero crater. TRN pro-vides real-time, autonomous, map-relative position determination and generates a landing target based on a priori knowledge of hazards. The required performance for TRN was to land within 60m of the selected target. The required 60m was sub-allocated to various error sources in three major categories: targeting error, knowledge error, and control error. The targeting error is the error in selecting an appropriate landing target and the knowledge of the target on the surface. It includes the Lander Vision System (LVS) position localization with respect the ground, the synchronization between the Lander Vision System measurement and the main Navigation filter, and errors associated with the LVS Reference Map and Safe Target Selec-tion (STS). The knowledge error is the contribution of knowledge growth from the synchronization with LVS to touchdown. The control error encompasses how accurately the system could stay on the desired reference trajectory. The TRN error budget uses a combination of analysis, simulation, and hardware test-ing results to bound the various error contributions obtained during the verification and validation process. This paper first presents a description the TRN system, focusing on the architecture of LVS and STS. The paper then gives detailed overview of the TRN error budget, with a description of the major error contribu-tions in each of the three categories. Next, the paper gives the results for three versions of the error budget, pre-launch, in-flight pre-landing, and post-landing. The paper compares the pre-flight analysis, the pre-landing analysis using in-flight data during cruise, to the post-landing analysis of the TRN performance. Pre-landing analysis best estimate of the landing performance was 33m, compared to the 60m require-ment. Post-landing analysis estimated a landing accuracy of 8.53m or better, much better than the 33m pre-landing estimate. The actual post-landing imagery calculated the distance of the rover to the targeted location to be 5m. The post-landing analysis closely bounds the image-based assessment of landing accu-racy, indicating the success of the error budget architecture in bounding the landing accuracy, as well as the fidelity of the simulations used to model and predict performance.

Chen, Allen↗
NASA NTRS2022

“Just Do It” Mission Operations Training in a COVID World

“No”- “not”- “can’t do it” – these words don’t fly in M2020 Mission Operations. The M2020 Surface Mission Operations Team trained for landing the Perseverance Rover under COVID-19 remote work/mandatory stay-at-home conditions. Training activities included presenting Flight Schools to the team via video conferencing, training COVID personal safety requirements to on-premises staff, and constantly updating and communicating COVID restrictions to the team as safety requirements changed. This paper explores the impact of COVID on the Mission System Training for M2020 Mission Operations. The layers of COVID, aptly named the “COVID Tax” by team management, affected project roles, communications, personnel interactions, operations facility usage and training exercises practiced by the team. Flight Schools and Operational Readiness Tests (ORTs) are driving forces behind the surface mission operations training. These activities work hand-in-hand to prepare the team for landing day, surface operations that transition from cruise to nominal operations, and nominal operations. Under normal training conditions, Flight Schools and ORTs are only concerned with tactical operations for the Uplink (Command) Downlink (Analysis) and Campaign Implementation (Planning) Teams of scientists and system engineers. Due to COVID, and the necessity to maintain physical distance between people, training for the landing team needed to include the new category of COVID personal safety. COVID also necessitated remote teams and video conferencing of the entirety of Flight Schools. This reliance on distance learning had not been done on previous missions. We will explore the advantages and disadvantages of video conferencing as a training platform; training effectiveness in communicating and practicing the multiple changes to the COVID safety protocols; and the timing in which we received and responded to COVID directives. Additionally, this paper will review the practical measures taken by the on-premises team and how the team adapted during the readiness tests, landing, and early mission operations, as well as how the team responded to the post-vaccine ramping down of COVID Protocols. The M2020 Surface Mission Operations Team responded very well to the challenges of COVID. All pre-landing operational and COVID-related training was completed. Post-landing COVID Training was provided as needed to new on-premises personnel. Training presented on COVID for the first operational readiness test (ORT) consisted of 2.5 hours of training. Each ORT had COVID Training. A person who had participated in all of the ORTs from September 2020 – February 2021 would have received over 7 hours of COVID Training. By ORT-12 (approximately 8 weeks after the first ORT), the Training team consolidated the original COVID training to a one-hour COVID Basic Training course, with additional recommended training. The Basic training course was updated after landing, as vaccines became available. COVID Training had multiple Flight Schools in the self-directed Blackboard Learning system, as well as a Quick Reference Wiki for Onboarding of new on-premises personnel and keeping on-premises personnel up-to-date. COVID Training covered many topics including practical methods of 6-foot distancing, how to interact with an IT professional when help was needed at a workstation, and challenging indoor meal-eating protocols. COVID Training continued to be updated, as the lab and the project respond to the virus variants and federal, state and local ordinances.

Rosette, Theresa↗
NASA NTRS2022

Automating Surface Attitude Positioning and Pointing Operations for Mars 2020

The Surface Attitude Positioning and Pointing (SAPP) subsystem of the Mars Perseverance rover keeps track of the rover’s position and attitude on the surface of Mars. The SAPP Downlink Engineering Operations team members receive data from the rover on a daily basis. They must interpret the data to make sure the rover is staying safe and to support uplink planning. The SAPP team keeps track of the error growth in the rover’s attitude estimate due to noise in the Rover Inertial Measurement Unit’s (RIMU) gyroscopes used to propagate that attitude estimate whenever the rover is moving. Whenever this error grows to a particular threshold, SAPP is responsible for updating the onboard attitude knowledge using the RIMU’s accelerometers to estimate rover roll and pitch and sun imaging to estimate rover yaw, thereby reducing this attitude estimation error. Accurate attitude estimation is required so that the rover can successfully point its High Gain Antenna (HGA) to receive information from Earth and as a backup to the Mars orbiters used for sending data from the rover to Earth, point instruments on its Remote Sensing Mast (RSM), and support safe movement and placement of instruments by the rover’s ARM relative to the Martian surface. The Mars 2020 Engineering Operations team has been working to increase the operational efficiency of the mission and eventually move to a five-hour timeline for daily operations. In pursuit of this goal, the SAPP Engineering Operations team has automated their downlink process by developing a centralized Jupyter notebook to analyze the data received daily from the rover. The SAPP downlink Jupyter notebook automatically collects the data relevant to the SAPP subsystem and visualizes this information in plots and tables that can be easily read by downlink operators to aid them in assessing the status of the subsystem. Various Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) have been incorporated into the downlink daily notebook to automate the collection and posting of data, such as gathering and posting data products to the cloud. The SAPP team has also developed a SAPP downlink software library that includes functions to aid the notebook in processing data. In addition to assessing the SAPP subsystem on a daily basis, operators need to assess the long-term trending behavior of the subsystem over time. An automated trending process has been developed to collect information from the daily notebooks in order to plot and analyze that data in a centralized place. These daily and trending processes have expedited the SAPP downlink assessment and laid the groundwork to completely automate the SAPP downlink process so that SAPP operators are unnecessary unless something unexpected occurs. This paper will provide an overview of the functions that the SAPP subsystem carries out on a daily basis, and will then dive into the automations that have been developed for daily and trending downlink assessment. An assessment of the downlink efficiency will be provided, along with a summary of lessons learned and work to go. Finally, the authors will discuss how these types of automated spacecraft health assessments could be more broadly used within mission operations.

Zarifian, Anais↗
NASA NTRS2023

The Planetary Protection Strategy of Mars Sample Return’s Earth Return Orbiter Mission

The Mars Sample Return campaign aims to use three flight missions and one ground element to safely bring rock cores, regolith and atmospheric samples from the surface of Mars to Earth to answer key questions about the geologic and climate history of Mars, including the potential for ancient life. Since its landing in Jezero Crater in 2021, the first mission, NASA’s Mars 2020, has collected a number of samples on the crater floor and on the delta using the Perseverance rover. Subsequent missions would recover the sealed sample tubes, launch them into Mars orbit, and transport them back to Earth. The ground element would be a high-containment facility that would isolate and protect the samples during initial sample characterization, which would include sample safety assessments and time-sensitive scientific investigations. These elements are currently in the planning and design stages of development, and represent an international effort of NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and many industry partners. The work presented here provides an overview of the planetary protection strategy of the third flight mission, the ESA-led Earth Return Orbiter (ERO), which hosts the NASA-provided Capture, Containment, and Return System (CCRS). ERO-CCRS would capture the container with up to 30 sealed tubes previously put in Martian orbit, contain them in redundant containers to ensure that no potentially hazardous Mars particles are released, and return them to Earth through an entry vehicle. Both NASA and ESA policies comply with the United Nations’ Outer Space Treaty by planning to protect Earth’s biosphere from any potential adverse effects from material returned from solar system bodies beyond the Earth-Moon system. In the conduct of Mars Sample Return, the two agencies have agreed to apply approaches consistent with their own planetary protection standards to the campaign elements each provides.

Mars Sample Return↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The Planetary Protection Strategy of Mars Sample Return Earth Return Orbiter Mission

The Mars Sample Return campaign aims to use three flight missions and one ground element to safely bring rock cores, regolith and atmospheric samples from the surface of Mars to Earth to answer key questions about the geologic and climate history of Mars, including the potential for ancient life. Since its landing in Jezero Crater in 2021, the first mission, NASA’s Mars 2020, has collected a number of samples on the crater floor and on the delta using the Perseverance rover. Subsequent missions would recover the sealed sample tubes, launch them into Mars orbit, and transport them back to Earth. The ground element would be a high-containment facility that would isolate and protect the samples during initial sample characterization, which would include sample safety assessments and time-sensitive scientific investigations. These elements are currently in the planning and design stages of development, and represent an international effort of NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and many industry partners. The work presented here provides an overview of the Planetary Protection strategy of the third flight mission, the ESA-led Earth Return Orbiter (ERO), which hosts the NASA-provided Capture, Containment, and Return System (CCRS). ERO-CCRS would detect and capture the container with up to 30 sealed tubes previously put in Martian orbit, contain them in redundant containers to ensure that no potentially hazardous Mars particles are released, and return them to Earth through an entry vehicle. Both NASA and ESA policies comply with the United Nations’ Outer Space Treaty by planning to protect Earth’s biosphere from any potential adverse effects from material returned from solar system bodies beyond the Earth-Moon system. In the conduct of Mars Sample Return, the two agencies have mutually agreed to apply approaches consistent with their own planetary protection standards to the campaign elements they each provides.

mars sample return↗
NASA NTRS2023

The Complex Exhumation History of Jezero Crater Floor Unit and Its Implication for Mars Sample Return

During the first year of NASA's Mars 2020 mission, Perseverance rover has investigated the dark crater floor unit of Jezero crater and four samples of this unit have been collected. The focus of this paper is to assess the potential of these samples to calibrate the crater-based Martian chronology. We first review the previous estimation of crater-based model age of this unit. Then, we investigate the impact crater density distribution across the floor unit. It reveals that the crater density is heterogeneous from areas which have been exposed to the bombardment during the last 3 Ga to areas very recently exposed to bombardment. It suggests a complex history of exposure to impact cratering. We also display evidence of several remnants of deposits on the top of the dark floor unit across Jezero below which the dark floor unit may have been buried. We propose the following scenario of burying/exhumation: the dark floor unit would have been initially buried below a unit that was a few tens of meters thick. This unit then gradually eroded away due to Aeolian processes from the northeast to the west, resulting in uneven exposure to impact bombardment over 3 Ga. A cratering model reproducing this scenario confirms the feasibility of this hypothesis. Due to the complexity of its exposure history, the Jezero dark crater floor unit will require additional detailed analysis to understand how the Mars 2020 mission samples of the crater floor can be used to inform the Martian cratering chronology.

Mars 2020↗
NASA NTRS2024

The Scientific Value of Collecting Samples From the Jezero Crater Rim

The Mars 2020 mission has been conducting ground-based investigation of the geology, habitability, and biosignature preservation potential and collecting samples for return to Earth in Jezero crater, Mars for nearly 3 years. Analysis of these samples will address outstanding questions in Mars science including potential habitability and how and why the climate the interior of the planet evolved through time. As of December 2023, samples of 4 igneous rocks of the Jezero crater floor and 9 sedimentary rocks of the Jezero fan and inner margin, remain on the rover. 15 tubes remain to be filled to enhance the diversity of the cache and broaden the scope of the science questions that can be addressed with returned sample studies. The next step in the mission is to explore the Jezero crater rim. It will be imperative to investigate and sample the diversity of crater rim rocks because they represent materials from Mars’ most ancient crust older than those sampled in Jezero crater, a diversity of geologic processes, and potential ancient habitable environments that have not yet been investigated or sampled. Ongoing mapping efforts are using orbiter data and long-distance images from Perseverance to identify and interpret the geologic context of the crater rim. Building on this effort and the broader geologic context for the crater rim put forward by previous studies, we identify diverse targets for in situ investigation and potential sampling by Mars 2020.

Mars sample return↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

An Orbital Photogeologic Map of the Jezero Crater Rim: Diverse Targets for Mars 2020 Future Exploration.

The Perseverance rover on the Mars 2020 mission is currently collecting samples in Jezero crater for potential future return to Earth by the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission. Jezero is a 45 km diameter mid- to late-Noachian-aged crater selected for its diverse geology and potential for preserving evidence of ancient life. The rover is approaching the crater rim, an area of interest for its potential to preserve diverse lithologies representative of a large period of geologic history. It has significant astrobiological potential, as it may preserve evidence of uplifted deep crust and ancient hydrothermal environments. Impact megabreccia in the crater rim may be exhumed pre-Noachian crust from the Isidis impact, which would likely be the oldest materials ever investigated by a rover on Mars. Additionally, the rim hosts outcrops of the regionally extensive and potentially volcanic olivine/carbonate unit and mafic capping unit, which could have implications for the evolution of Mars volcanism. Regional maps have delineated the lithologies present in and around Jezero as a whole. The largest scale that the crater rim geology has been mapped is 1:5000.

M C Deahn↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Mineral composition of Al-rich float rocks in Jezero crater as seen by Super-Cam

During its traverse across the Jezero crater floor and western fan, the Perseverance rover encountered > 4000 float rocks – of variable size (up to ~ 50 cm) scattered on the ground without apparent connection to the surrounding stratigraphy [1]. Analysis performed using the SuperCam instrument’s [2,3,4], Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) revealed a high concentration of Al 2 O 3 , Cr, Ti and Ni [5], and very low of Fe, Mg, Ca and Na [5, 1]. SuperCam’s infrared reflectance spectroscopy (IRS, between 1.3 and 2.6 μm) showed the presence of Al-rich aqueous alteration minerals (characteristic absorption bands of kaolinite and Al-smectites at 1.4 and 2.2 μm) as well as some (likely Cr-) spinels, identified uthrough their broad asymmetric 2 μm band, responsible for the concavity of IR spectra. These mineral species alone do not fully account for the spectral shapes; hence, the objective is to further investigate spectral modeling to determine the most probable mineral assemblages. Here, we present the results of modeling 17 light-toned float rocks, up to Sol 924, complementary to [1].

C. Royer↗
NASA NTRS2024

Fe-Phosphates in the Jezero Crater Fan: Implications for Habitability and Sample Return

In the ~1000 sols since the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover landed on the floor of Jezero crater, it has traversed >23 km, carrying out analyses of the crater floor and western fan. The fan is comprised of sediments transported and deposited by streams that once flowed into Jezero crater in the late Noachian to early Hesperian[1]. Detailed investigation of the sediments and rocks of the western fan can thus provide insights into ancient fluvial to lacustrine environments on Mars, whether they were habitable, and/or if biosignatures maybe preserved.

T V Kizovski↗
NASA NTRS2024

Depositional History of the Upper Sequence of the Western Fan: Evidence for Late-Stage Fluvial and Potential Igneous Activity, Jezero Crater, Mars

Within Jezero crater, a 45 km diameter Noachian-aged crater on Mars, the Upper Fan group (UFg) stratigraphy records the youngest interval of sediment deposition via aqueous activity on the western fan. From orbital images, the UFg surface is characterized by ridges interpreted to be associated with channels that can be group based on orientation into distinct elongate and fan-shaped deposits. UFg deposits primarily consist of a sandstone to granule conglomerate facies covered by a lithified boulder conglomerate or dense accumulations of loose boulders along the surface. The coarse-grained nature of UFg deposits and the unconformable contact with the underlying fan stratigraphy suggest that the UFg represents a higher-energy shift from the relatively longer-lived, lower-energy aqueous systems interpreted in underlying fan stratigraphy. The Mars 2020 Perseverance rover encountered the main exposures of the UFg deposits beginning on Sol 755 and has been continuously collecting data along its northwestward traverse across the fan, enabling reconciliation of orbitally-derived geomorphology with in-situ observations from the rover and Ingenuity helicopter. This work represents a combined assessment of the geomorphology and the sedimentology and stratigraphy of the UFg in order to establish its depositional and emplacement history. Determining the origins of the Upper Fan sequence will clarify how, when, and in what order aqueous environments evolved through time within Jezero crater (e.g. crater infill, overflow, breach, and lake level drop;). Finally, this work will provide critical context for the three rock samples within the UFg sample suite.

Mars 2020↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Pristine Pyroxene-Bearing Boulders Analyzed By Supercam in the Jezero Western Fan, Mars

During its exploration of the upper surface of the Jezero western fan, the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover encountered a population of boulders that likely represents a late-stage deposit from high-energy floods. These boulders can be divided into two groups based on their inferred mineralogy: olivine-rich and pyroxene-bearing. The first group, the most abundant one, is described in ref.[2]. Here, we present the analyses performed by the SuperCam instrument on the pyroxene-bearing boulders and show that they are among the most pristine rocks encountered so far in the mission. We also draw a comparison with the Boston Knob outcrop, located on the fan front, which may be a buried and stratigraphically lower equivalent of the pyroxene-bearing boulders of the upper fan.

Mars 2020↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Chemistry and Mineralogy of the Margin Unit, Jezero Crater, Mars, Observed By M2020 / Supercam

The Margin Unit of Jezero crater, Mars, was identified from orbit as one of the most carbonate-rich regions of the planet [e.g., 1,2]. Its presence, along with the adjacent fluvial delta [e.g., 3] made Jezero crater the most compelling landing site for the Mars 2020 mission. Investigation of Jezero’s Margin-Unit carbonates provides a unique opportunity to address the formation of carbonates in sedimentary deposits, possibly under a CO 2 -rich martian atmosphere. Here we report on chemistry and mineralogy of 55 targets observed by the multi-technique SuperCam instrument during Perseverance’s crater-margin campaign.

Mars 2020↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Viscosity and Flow Properties of the Seitah Olivine-Rich Lithology

One of the most surprising findings of the Perseverance rover was the discovery of olivine cumulate in the Séítah region [1]. The rover landed and traversed to the Séítah region and collected measurements at three workspaces: Bastide, Brac and Issole (Fig 1). Here we use the SuperCam VISIR and LIBS to investigate the properties of the lithology insitu and determine two things: 1) the olivine-clay-carbonate regional lithology is low in Al3+, which allows us to eliminate the possibility of clays which are high in Al3+, 2) the viscosity of the Séítah formation is extremely low, which is a reasonable explanation for the Séítah unit to both cumulate and thin-layered (Fig 1b).

Mars 2020↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Regional Paleoenvironments Recorded in Sedimentary Rocks of the Western Fan-Delta, Jezero Crater, Mars.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance rover science team recently completed an investigation of the fan-delta sedimentary sequence [1] and has begun exploration of the crater margin. High resolution chemical, mineralogical, and morphological observations collected with the rover instrument payload provide powerful constraints on rock origins, contextualizing the suite of high-value samples collected as part of the Mars Sample Return campaign.

Mars 2020↗