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 Perseverance Rover Updates

These updates are provided by self-selected Mars 2020 mission team members who love to share what Perseverance is doing with the public. Dates of planned rover activities described in these blogs are subject to change due to a variety of factors related to the Martian environment, communication relays and rover status.

An Update From the 2025 Mars 2020 Science Team Meeting
3 min read

A behind-the-scenes look at the annual Mars 2020 Science Team Meeting Written by Katie Stack Morgan, Mars 2020 Acting Project Scientist  The Mars 2020 Science Team gathered for a week in June to discuss recent science results, synthesize earlier mission…

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Clay Minerals From Mars’ Most Ancient Past?
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Recent detections of clay-bearing bedrock on Jezero’s crater rim have the Perseverance Science Team excited and eager to sample. Written by Alex Jones, Ph.D. candidate at Imperial College London  Since finishing its exploration of spherule-rich stratigraphy at Witch Hazel Hill,…

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Searching for Ancient Rocks in the ‘Forlandet’ Flats
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Written by Henry Manelski, Ph.D. student at Purdue University This week Perseverance continued its gradual descent into the relatively flat terrain outside of Jezero Crater. In this area, the science team expects to find rocks that could be among the…

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A Dust Devil Photobombs Perseverance!
3 min read

Written by Athanasios Klidaras, Ph.D. candidate at Purdue University, and Megan Kennedy Wu, Senior Mission Operations Specialist at Malin Space Science Systems To celebrate her 1,500th Martian day (“Sol”) exploring the red planet, the Perseverance rover used its robotic arm…

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A Tough Drill at Witch Hazel Hill
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Written by Alex Jones, Ph.D. candidate at Imperial College London  After a busy few months exploring the outer slopes of the Jezero crater rim at an area named “Witch Hazel Hill,” the Perseverance Science Team was eyeing another sample of…

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Searching for Spherules to Sample
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Written by Denise Buckner, Postdoctoral Fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center  Over the past few weeks, Perseverance has been investigating some curious spherules peppered across the “Witch Hazel Hill” region along the rim of Jezero crater. A striking cluster…

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Searching for the Dark in the Light
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Written by Eleanor Moreland, Ph.D. Student Collaborator at Rice University  Perseverance has been busy exploring lower “Witch Hazel Hill,” an outcrop exposed on the edge of the Jezero crater rim. The outcrop is composed of alternating light and dark layers,…

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Origins Uncertain: ‘Skull Hill’ Rock
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Written by Margaret Deahn, Ph.D. Student at Purdue University Last week, NASA’s Mars 2020 rover continued its journey down lower ‘Witch Hazel Hill’ on the Jezero crater rim. The rover stopped along a boundary visible from orbit dividing light and…

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Visiting Mars on the Way to the Outer Solar System
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Written by Roger Wiens, Principal Investigator, SuperCam instrument / Co-Investigator, SHERLOC instrument at Purdue University Recently Mars has had a few Earthly visitors. On March 1, NASA’s Europa Clipper flew within 550 miles (884 kilometers) of the Red Planet’s surface…

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Shocking Spherules!
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Written by Alex Jones, Ph.D. candidate at Imperial College London Last week the Perseverance Science Team were astonished by a strange rock comprised of hundreds of millimeter-sized spheres… and the team are now working hard to understand their origin.  It…

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