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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.

Perseverance Meets the Megabreccia
2 min read

Written by By Henry Manelski, Ph.D. student at Purdue University Last week, the Perseverance rover began an exciting new journey. Driving northwest of the Soroya ridge, Perseverance entered an area filled with a diverse range of boulders that the science…

Sep 8, 2025
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Over Soroya Ridge & Onward!
2 min read

Written by Eleanor Moreland, Ph.D. Student Collaborator at Rice University Perseverance has continued exploring beyond the rim of Jezero crater, spending time last week at Parnasset conducting a mini-campaign on aeolian bedforms. After wrapping up that work, three separate drives…

Aug 27, 2025
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To See the World in a Grain of Sand: Investigating Megaripples at ‘Kerrlaguna’
3 min read

Written by Athanasios Klidaras, Ph.D. candidate at Purdue University On Mars, the past is written in stone — but the present is written in sand. Last week, Perseverance explored inactive megaripples to learn more about the wind-driven processes that are…

Aug 21, 2025
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Linking Local Lithologies to a Larger Landscape
2 min read

Written by Margaret Deahn, Ph.D. Student at Purdue University NASA’s Mars 2020 rover is continuing to explore a boundary visible from orbit dividing bright, fractured outcrop from darker, smoother regolith (also known as a contact). The team has called this…

Aug 7, 2025
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Spheres in the Sand
3 min read

Written by Andrew Shumway, Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Washington It is not common for a rover to spot nearly perfect spheres in the soil beneath its wheels. Over two decades ago, the Opportunity rover famously discovered spherules made…

Jul 29, 2025
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Feeling the Heat: Perseverance Looks for Evidence of Contact Metamorphism 
2 min read

Written by Melissa Rice, Professor of Planetary Science at Western Washington University Following a short break for the July 4th holiday, Perseverance drove westward to a site called “Westport,” where the clay-bearing “Krokodillen” unit meets an olivine-bearing rock formation. It…

Jul 22, 2025
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Continuing the Quest for Clays
3 min read

Written by Eleanor Moreland, Ph.D. Student Collaborator at Rice University For the past month and a half, Perseverance has been exploring the Krokodillen plateau in search of clay-bearing rocks. An earlier blog discussed that these rocks could hold clues to…

Jul 8, 2025
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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…

Jul 1, 2025
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Clay Minerals From Mars’ Most Ancient Past?
2 min read

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,…

Jun 23, 2025
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Searching for Ancient Rocks in the ‘Forlandet’ Flats
2 min read

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…

Jun 6, 2025
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