1. Overview and Results From the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover's First Science Campaign on the Jezero Crater Floor
- Author
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Vivian Z. Sun, Kevin P. Hand, Kathryn M. Stack, Ken A. Farley, Justin I. Simon, Claire Newman, Sunanda Sharma, Yang Liu, Roger C. Wiens, Amy J. Williams, Nicholas Tosca, Sanna Alwmark, Olivier Beyssac, Adrian Brown, Fred Calef, Emily L. Cardarelli, Elise Clavé, Barbara Cohen, Andrea Corpolongo, Andrew D. Czaja, Tyler Del Sesto, Alberto Fairen, Teresa Fornaro, Thierry Fouchet, Brad Garczynski, Sanjeev Gupta, Chris D. K. Herd, Keyron Hickman‐Lewis, Briony Horgan, Jeffrey Johnson, Kjartan Kinch, Tanya Kizovski, Rachel Kronyak, Robert Lange, Lucia Mandon, Sarah Milkovich, Robert Moeller, Jorge Núñez, Gerhard Paar, Guy Pyrzak, Cathy Quantin‐Nataf, David L. Shuster, Sandra Siljestrom, Andrew Steele, Michael Tice, Olivier Toupet, Arya Udry, Alicia Vaughan, Brittan Wogsland, Sun, VZ [0000-0003-1480-7369], Hand, KP [0000-0002-3225-9426], Simon, JI [0000-0002-3969-8958], Newman, C [0000-0001-9990-8817], Wiens, RC [0000-0002-3409-7344], Tosca, N [0000-0003-4415-4231], Alwmark, S [0000-0002-0146-9324], Beyssac, O [0000-0001-8879-4762], Brown, A [0000-0002-9352-6989], Calef, F [0000-0002-5132-3980], Cardarelli, EL [0000-0001-5451-2309], Clavé, E [0000-0002-9514-8168], Cohen, B [0000-0001-5896-5903], Corpolongo, A [0000-0002-8623-358X], Czaja, AD [0000-0002-2450-0734], Fairen, A [0000-0002-2938-6010], Fornaro, T [0000-0001-7705-9658], Fouchet, T [0000-0001-9040-8285], Herd, CDK [0000-0001-5210-4002], Horgan, B [0000-0001-6314-9724], Johnson, J [0000-0002-5586-4901], Kinch, K [0000-0002-4629-8880], Kronyak, R [0000-0002-2740-5660], Mandon, L [0000-0002-9310-0742], Núñez, J [0000-0003-0930-6674], Paar, G [0000-0003-3198-8640], Pyrzak, G [0000-0001-7094-9770], Steele, A [0000-0001-9643-2841], Toupet, O [0000-0003-4993-7390], Udry, A [0000-0002-0074-8110], Wogsland, B [0000-0002-7829-5094], and Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository
- Subjects
Geophysics ,Space and Planetary Science ,Geochemistry and Petrology ,5101 Astronomical Sciences ,Earth and Planetary Sciences (miscellaneous) ,37 Earth Sciences ,3705 Geology ,51 Physical Sciences ,3703 Geochemistry - Abstract
The Mars 2020 Perseverance rover landed in Jezero crater on 18 February 2021. After a 100‐sol period of commissioning and the Ingenuity Helicopter technology demonstration, Perseverance began its first science campaign to explore the enigmatic Jezero crater floor, whose igneous or sedimentary origins have been much debated in the scientific community. This paper describes the campaign plan developed to explore the crater floor's Máaz and Séítah formations and summarizes the results of the campaign between sols 100–379. By the end of the campaign, Perseverance had traversed more than 5 km, created seven abrasion patches, and sealed nine samples and a witness tube. Analysis of remote and proximity science observations show that the Máaz and Séítah formations are igneous in origin and composed of five and two geologic members, respectively. The Séítah formation represents the olivine‐rich cumulate formed from differentiation of a slowly cooling melt or magma body, and the Máaz formation likely represents a separate series of lava flows emplaced after Séítah. The Máaz and Séítah rocks also preserve evidence of multiple episodes of aqueous alteration in secondary minerals like carbonate, Fe/Mg phyllosilicates, sulfates, and perchlorate, and surficial coatings. Post‐emplacement processes tilted the rocks near the Máaz‐Séítah contact and substantial erosion modified the crater floor rocks to their present‐day expressions. Results from this crater floor campaign, including those obtained upon return of the collected samples, will help to build the geologic history of events that occurred in Jezero crater and provide time constraints on the formation of the Jezero delta.
- Published
- 2023