ABC News August 14, 2024

NASA's Mars rover to begin 'most challenging' journey up crater rim

WATCH: NASA's Mars rover to begin 'most challenging' journey up crater rim
By Leah Sarnoff

Marking a new journey in NASA's exploration of Mars, the Perseverance rover is set to begin a monthslong, steep and challenging ascent up a crater, the space agency announced Wednesday.

The Perseverance rover, nicknamed "Percy," is the centerpiece of NASA's Mars 2020 mission, working to collect data in preparation for future human exploration of the Red Planet.

MORE: NASA hopes to send astronauts to Mars in the 2030s; here's how they will get there

The car-sized spacecraft has spent two and a half years exploring the Mars Jezero Crater floor and river delta and beginning the week of Aug. 19, will start the ascent up the western rim of the crater.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
This map shows the route NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover will take (in blue) as it climbs the western rim of Jezero Crater, first reaching “Dox Castle,” then investigating the “Pico Turquino” area before approaching “Witch Hazel Hill.”

"Perseverance has completed four science campaigns, collected 22 rock cores, and traveled over 18 unpaved miles," Art Thompson, Perseverance project manager at of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in a press release Wednesday.

"As we start the Crater Rim Campaign, our rover is in excellent condition, and the team is raring to see what's on the roof of this place," Thompson added.

NASA/JPL-Caltech
One of the navigation cameras aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover captured this view looking back at the “Bright Angel” area on July 30, the 1,224th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.

In what will be the "most challenging" journey for the rover to date, Perseverance will rely on auto-navigation capabilities while encountering slopes of up to 23 degrees on the pre-planned path up the crater.

MORE: Water frost detected on Mars' volcanoes in 'significant' first discovery: Study

When Perseverance summits the crater, which scientists have dubbed "Aurora Park," the rover will have gained approximately 1,000 feet in elevation.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
This panorama shows the area NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover will climb in coming months to crest Jezero Crater’s rim. It is made up of 59 images taken by the rover’s Mastcam-Z on Aug. 4.

Researchers are looking forward to the new frontier of data that awaits the rover on the crater rim, saying the mission expects "many more discoveries to come."

Eleni Ravanis, a University of Hawaiì at Mānoa scientist on Perseverance's Mastcam-Z instrument team and one of the Crater Rim Campaign science leads, said the findings will have "significant implications" in understanding the Red Planet.

"Our samples are already an incredibly scientifically compelling collection, but the crater rim promises to provide even more samples that will have significant implications for our understanding of Martian geologic history," Ravanis said in the release.

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