Perseverance, Mars 2020 Rover : Updates

[vjkane]

Collected:
Next up: return to Earth for analyzation in a lab (assuming it gets selected for return)!

I see a new TV series, Game of Samples, as they vie to be among the lucky chosen.   

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/haygenwarren/status/1437806572101464064

New rover selfie!

Perseverance took this selfie on Sol 198 (Sept. 10, 2021) while at the Citadelle ridge in Jezero Crater. In the bottom left is Rochette, the rock Percy collected its first two samples from.

Just a reminder that robots take selfies on another planet.

[Star One]

Full resolution image of the above:

https://flickr.com/photos/thomasappere/51468584039/in/feed-105014333-1631564519-1-72157719983496718

[Rondaz]

Update on NASA's Perseverance Rover SHERLOC Instrument Sept 23, 2021

[Star One]

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Captures the Sounds of Mars:

[edzieba]

Doesn't look lie much, if any, change to the scene beyond the obvious change in lighting angle.

[meekGee]

I mean, they're at the exact same place and it's only been two weeks, right?  (Or am I misunderstanding the situation?)

They can just take an image that almost precisely replicates the lighting angle, no?

[Cherurbino]

I mean, they're at the exact same place and it's only been two weeks, right?  (Or am I misunderstanding the situation?)

You are right: exactly on the same place. Here's a link - "Hunkering Down for Solar Conjunction".

Between sols 217-235 (September 28 – October 17) nobody could send new instructions to the rover. The Right Navigation Camera (Navcam) which took these photos remained in the same position, with the same settings, so when communications resumed, the first command to NavCam was "take the last picture again".

I checked the settings for each frame - they were exactly the same:

   mastAz: "359.252",
   mastEl: "-47.682",
   scaleFactor: "1",
   xyz: "(181.559,-129.5,-1.72773)",
   subframeRect: "(2593,1793,1296,976)",
   dimension: "(1296,976)"
Azimuth: "49 deg"

They can just take an image that almost precisely replicates the lighting angle, no?

No, the lightning angle can't be repeated exactly. Timestamps are different:
- for September 27, 2021 (Sol 215) the local mean solar time was 10:55:56;
- for October 16, 2021 (Sol 233) the local mean solar time was 17:00:20.

[Phil Stooke]

The images were taken in sets which cycle through similar times of day and similar lighting.  If you pick your images carefully you will be able to find much better image pairs than this one, much easier to compare for change detection.

[Cherurbino]

The images were taken in sets which cycle through similar times of day and similar lighting.  If you pick your images carefully you will be able to find much better image pairs than this one, much easier to compare for change detection.

You are right: recently I saw another images acquired for the other conjunction days and now consider my publication premature.

Animation 'Four frames sol 233.gif' is deleted. Sorry.

[meekGee]

I mean, they're at the exact same place and it's only been two weeks, right?  (Or am I misunderstanding the situation?)

You are right: exactly on the same place. Here's a link - "Hunkering Down for Solar Conjunction".

Between sols 217-235 (September 28 – October 17) nobody could send new instructions to the rover. The Right Navigation Camera (Navcam) which took these photos remained in the same position, with the same settings, so when communications resumed, the first command to NavCam was "take the last picture again".

I checked the settings for each frame - they were exactly the same:

   mastAz: "359.252",
   mastEl: "-47.682",
   scaleFactor: "1",
   xyz: "(181.559,-129.5,-1.72773)",
   subframeRect: "(2593,1793,1296,976)",
   dimension: "(1296,976)"
Azimuth: "49 deg"

They can just take an image that almost precisely replicates the lighting angle, no?

No, the lightning angle can't be repeated exactly. Timestamps are different:
- for September 27, 2021 (Sol 215) the local mean solar time was 10:55:56;
- for October 16, 2021 (Sol 233) the local mean solar time was 17:00:20.

I didn't say take the photo at the exact same timestamp...

I said take "almost replicate the lighting angle", with "almost" because it has been two weeks and while you can match the solar elevation, the azimuth will be just a bit off.

[Cherurbino]

while you can match the solar elevation, the azimuth will be just a bit off.

You are certainly right!

BTW, just for the extended information: there are two azimuths in the description I quoted - one shows angular position of the rover against Ls, and another - the rotation angle of the mast against the rover body. Phil, please correct me if I was wrong again)))

I could bring here a very nice panorama, recently acquired py Perseverance, but the files are too large to be displayed here. Thus I invite everybody to follow this NASA link https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/26296. This is the first panorama where the degrees in Ls are written.

[eeergo]

Mrs. Trooper announced it is likely the first sample drop off point at Jezero might be at the edge of the crater. The currently preferred location appears to be at the top of this image:

[Blackstar]

Second sample acquired.

[vjkane]

Lori Glaze presented this slide detailing the samples collected and the abrasions to date by Perseverance. From this past week's Space Week presentations.

Her presentation only had two slides with information; the other one showed current and planned planetary missions. https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/03-21-2022/docs/D7CF2D56483694428ACFDFBF17C42C491C2443BF2E16

[eeergo]

Parachute (and backshell, which is the most obvious protrusion in the image) spotted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/mars_stu/status/1511942559224020993

[Star One]

Perseverance observes Solar Eclipse on Mars:

[Hobbes-22]

Perseverance observes Solar Eclipse on Mars:

The video doesn't say, but that's in real time.

[Star One]

NASA’s Perseverance Studies the Wild Winds of Jezero Crater

The rover’s weather sensors witnessed daily whirlwinds and more while studying the Red Planet.

During its first couple hundred days in Jezero Crater, NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover saw some of the most intense dust activity ever witnessed by a mission sent to the Red Planet’s surface. Not only did the rover detect hundreds of dust-bearing whirlwinds called dust devils, Perseverance captured the first video ever recorded of wind gusts lifting a massive Martian dust cloud.

A paper recently published in Science Advances chronicles the trove of weather phenomena observed in the first 216 Martian days, or sols. The new findings enable scientists to better understand dust processes on Mars and contribute to a body of knowledge that could one day help them predict the dust storms that Mars is famous for – and that pose a threat to future robotic and human explorers.
Jezero Crater may be in one of the most active sources of dust on the planet.
Manuel de la Torre Juarez
“Every time we land in a new place on Mars, it’s an opportunity to better understand the planet’s weather,” said the paper’s lead author, Claire Newman of Aeolis Research, a research company focused on planetary atmospheres. She added there may be more exciting weather on the way: “We had a regional dust storm right on top of us in January, but we’re still in the middle of dust season, so we’re very likely to see more dust storms.”

Perseverance made these observations primarily with the rover’s cameras and a suite of sensors belonging to the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA), a science instrument led by Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología in collaboration with the Finnish Meteorological Institute and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. MEDA includes wind sensors, light sensors that can detect whirlwinds as they scatter sunlight around the rover, and a sky-facing camera for capturing images of dust and clouds.

“Jezero Crater may be in one of the most active sources of dust on the planet,” said Manuel de la Torre Juarez, MEDA’s deputy principal investigator at JPL. “Everything new we learn about dust will be helpful for future missions.”

Frequent Whirlwinds

The study authors found that at least four whirlwinds pass Perseverance on a typical Martian day and that more than one per hour passes by during a peak hourlong period just after noon.

The rover’s cameras also documented three occasions in which wind gusts lifted large dust clouds, something the scientists call “gust-lifting events.” The biggest of these created a massive cloud covering 1.5 square miles (4 square kilometers). The paper estimated that these wind gusts may collectively lift as much or more dust as the whirlwinds that far outnumber them.

“We think these gust-liftings are infrequent but could be responsible for a large fraction of the background dust that hovers all the time in the Martian atmosphere,” Newman said.

Why Is Jezero Different?

While wind and dust are prevalent all over Mars, what the researchers are finding seems to set Jezero apart. This greater activity may be linked to the crater being near what Newman describes as a “dust storm track” that runs north to south across the planet, often lifting dust during the dust storm season.

Newman added that the greater activity in Jezero could be due to factors such as the roughness of its surface, which can make it easier for the wind to lift dust. That could be one explanation why NASA’s InSight lander – in Elysium Planitia, about 2,145 miles (3,452 kilometers) away from Jezero Crater – is still waiting for a whirlwind to clear its dust-laden solar panels, while Perseverance has already measured nearby surface dust removal by several passing whirlwinds.

“Perseverance is nuclear-powered, but if we had solar panels instead, we probably wouldn’t have to worry about dust buildup,” Newman said. “There’s generally just more dust lifting in Jezero Crater, though average wind speeds are lower there and peak wind speeds and whirlwind activity are comparable to Elysium Planitia.”

In fact, Jezero’s dust lifting has been more intense than the team would have wanted: Sand carried in whirlwinds damaged MEDA’s two wind sensors. The team suspects the sand grains harmed the thin wiring on the wind sensors, which stick out from Perseverance’s mast. These sensors are particularly vulnerable because they must remain exposed to the wind in order to measure it correctly. Sand grains blown in the wind, and likely carried in whirlwinds, also damaged one of the Curiosity rover’s wind sensors (Curiosity’s other wind sensor was damaged by debris churned up during its landing in Gale Crater).

With Curiosity’s damage in mind, the Perseverance team provided an additional protective coating to MEDA’s wires. Yet Jezero’s weather still got the better of them. De la Torre Juarez said the team is testing software changes that should allow the wind sensors to keep working.

“We collected a lot of great science data,” de la Torre Juarez said. “The wind sensors are seriously impacted, ironically, because we got what we wanted to measure.”

More About the Mission

A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

For more about Perseverance:

mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
News Media Contact

Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
[email protected]
Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
301-286-6284 / 202-358-1501
[email protected] / [email protected]

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-perseverance-studies-the-wild-winds-of-jezero-crater

[Rondaz]

Martian wind pebble damaged the sensor of the Perseverance rover.

16:57 06 July 2022

One of the Perseverance rover's wind sensors was damaged after it was hit by a small rock that was blown into the atmosphere by a very strong gust of wind. Wind observations for the time being will be carried out mainly by the rover's second wind sensor, according to Space.com.

The study of climate dynamics on Mars is important not only for understanding the evolution of the planet in the past, but also for planning future manned expeditions to Mars. Scientists receive these data both with the help of orbiters and rovers and automatic stations. The Perseverance rover, which arrived on the planet last year and operates in the Lake crater, stands out among all the devices, as it delivered to Mars the most advanced system of sensors that are located on the mast of the rover, the outer upper surface of the rover body and inside it. With their help, pressure, temperature, dust content and relative humidity of the atmosphere, wind speed and direction, as well as radiation flux from the planet's surface and soil temperature are monitored.

On July 3, 2022, the rover team reported that one of the two Perseverance wind sensors mounted on the rover's mast was damaged by a small rock blown into the atmosphere by a very strong gust of wind. The sensors were created taking into account the weather conditions on Mars and the redundancy system, but this situation was not foreseen. Currently, the capabilities of the damaged sensor are limited, although it receives data on wind speed and direction. Now specialists will try to restore the full operation of the sensor, and the current wind monitoring will be carried out mainly by the second, undamaged sensor.

Earlier, we talked about how dust whirlwinds and rising winds were responsible for the dust haze on Mars.

Alexander Voytyuk

https://nplus1.ru/news/2022/07/06/rover-and-mars-wind