No need to hike up there to see-let the river do the work. Prospectors looking for gold or diamonds in the old days often looked in rivers to determine whether there was any deposit of interest upstream. The view, from one of Perseverance’s Hazard Cameras, is partially obscured by a dust cover. 'Whether the boulders appear intriguing enough for closer examination and possible sampling remains to be seen-literally,' said Farley. This is the first image NASA’s Perseverance rover sent back after touching down on Mars on Feb. So the team will be keeping their options open, ready to stop for anything that piques their curiosity. Boulders are also desirable because their large surface area allows scientists to visually investigate many potentially distinct rocks in a single image. Credit: NASA/JPL-CaltechĪs with the rock fragments in the Otis Peak sample, scientists believe the boulders likely formed elsewhere and were transported to their present location billions of years ago by an ancient river. NASA InSight Study Provides Clearest Look Ever at Martian Core.

NASA and ESA Agree on Next Steps to Return Mars Samples to Earth. NASAs Perseverance Rover to Begin Building Martian Sample Depot. NASA Retires InSight Mars Lander Mission After Years of Science. NASA's Perseverance captured this image June 13 of a sample it cored from a conglomerate rock called 'Emerald Lake.' This 'Otis Peak' core shows distinctly colored areas that are individual minerals transported by a river that once flowed into Jezero Crater. NASAs Perseverance Rover Deposits First Sample on Mars Surface. To get there, it will have to cross a field of boulders. Mastcam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rovers mast. With this sample sealed and stored in its belly, the rover is on its way to a low ridge called Snowdrift Peak. NASAs Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image using its Right Mastcam-Z camera. Now in its third science campaign, Perseverance is exploring the top of a fan-shaped pile of sedimentary rock that stands 130 feet (40 meters) tall.

Scientists will be able to look at each pebble and fragment in this core, dubbed 'Otis Peak,' to determine details such as its age, what the environmental conditions were like in the river when the conglomerate formed, and whether it contains signs of ancient microbial life. Perseverance is collecting these samples so that they can be brought to Earth by the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Mars Sample Return campaign and studied by lab equipment that's too large and complex to bring to Mars. 'And while the water that created the Martian riverbed that Perseverance is currently exploring evaporated billions of years ago, the story carried by those waters remains fresh, stored in conglomerate rock.' 'Pebbles and boulders found in a river are messengers from afar,' said Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist from Caltech in Pasadena.

Nasa images from perseverance