Nearly five years into its mission on the Red Planet, the car-sized rover still has enough remaining capability to drive more than twice the distance it has already logged, mission scientists said Wednesday (Dec. 17) at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Louisiana. If all goes according to plan and nothing breaks, Perseverance could drive as much as 62 miles (100 kilometers) by the time its mission is over.

That estimate puts the six-wheeled robot on track to surpass the current distance record of 28.06 miles (45.16 kilometers), set by NASA's Opportunity rover after more than 14 years of exploration on Mars before a monster dust storm ended its mission in 2018. Perseverance is "in excellent shape," Steve Lee, the rover's deputy project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, told reporters at the conference.

Lee said engineering tests completed over the summer certified that the rotary actuators used to steer Perseverance's wheels can operate optimally for at least another 37 miles (60 kilometers). Since touching down inside Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021, the rover has already traveled about 25 miles (40 kilometers), according to NASA. "It just turned out to add up to a nice even 100 kilometers," Lee said.

Perseverance was originally tested and certified to drive a total of just 12 miles (20 kilometers). Its extended durability reflects lessons learned from Curiosity, its predecessor, whose wheels accumulated an increasing number of dings and punctures after encountering terrain sharper and more rugged than anticipated. That led engineers to design Perseverance's wheels for even tougher conditions, making them larger in diameter and giving them twice as many treads as Curiosity's, Lee said.

"That is proving to play out very well," Lee added. The rover's wheels, he said, "are in fantastic shape" with no known punctures or tears.

Since its wheels-down landing in Jezero Crater — the remnant of a massive impact about 3.9 billion years ago that was later home to a large lake and river delta — Perseverance has drilled and cached rock samples in its search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover has since climbed more than 1,300 feet (400 meters) up the crater's inner wall and onto the rim, exploring new terrain.

Along the way, Perseverance found one of its most intriguing targets yet — an arrowhead-shaped rock nicknamed Cheyava Falls that contains chemical signatures and structures scientists say could have formed through processes associated with microbial life billions of years ago, when Mars was much wetter than it is today.

In a paper published Dec. 17 in the journal Science, scientists report results from the crater's "Margin Unit," where Perseverance collected samples rich in the mineral olivine. This olivine likely formed at high temperatures deep within the Red Planet until being later exposed at the surface, where it interacted with water from Jezero's long-gone lake and with carbon dioxide in Mars' early atmosphere.

Those interactions produced carbonate minerals, which can preserve chemical signatures of past environments and potentially of biological activity, scientists say.

"This combination of olivine and carbonate was a major factor in the choice to land at Jezero Crater," study lead author Ken Williford of the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science in Washington said in NASA's statement. "These minerals are powerful recorders of planetary evolution and the potential for life."

As Perseverance moves beyond the crater's rim, scientists hope to collect additional olivine-rich samples and compare them with those gathered from the Margin Unit.

The rover currently carries six unused sample tubes, and at least two tubes contain samples that have been collected but not yet sealed, meaning they could be replaced if more compelling targets emerge, Lee said.

That flexibility may prove important as the rover pushes into new terrain. This week, the rover is expected to reach a site nicknamed Lac de Charmes, just beyond the rim of Jezero Crater, where ancient rocks appear to be more intact — and potentially more revealing of early Martian geological processes — than those closer to the crater, Briony Horgan of Purdue University in Indiana who co-authored the new Science paper, told reporters on Wednesday.

Perseverance captured this panoramic view that includes Lac de Charmes, where it will look to collect additional samples next year. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS)

Scientists are eager to bring Perseverance's haul — the 10 sample tubes dropped onto the crater floor in 2023 — back to laboratories on Earth, but their return remains uncertain as NASA's troubled Mars Sample Return program languishes in limbo.

That uncertainty has not altered Perseverance's near-term science plans, Lee said. The mission team is working with NASA headquarters to finalize the rover's next 2.5 years of exploration, extending through most of 2028, he said, with no current plans to deposit additional sample tubes beyond those already awaiting potential pickup.

The team is also beginning to explore how artificial intelligence might assist mission operations and data analysis. Lee described AI as "an exciting emerging capability," particularly for identifying long-term trends in the rover's growing data archive, and potentially helping develop short-term activity plans.

"We still are at that stage where we want to make sure to do that very carefully," Lee said.

Any AI-assisted plans would still undergo the same rigorous simulations and human oversight as traditional command sequences, he said, "to make sure any plans that are developed are going to make sense and are safe."

When asked how long Perseverance may last on Mars, Lee said the rover carries no consumables, such as propellant, that would impose a hard end to the mission. A NASA assessment of the rover's subsystems predicts that Perseverance could continue operating through at least 2031.

The primary life-limiting factor for the rover is its radioisotope thermoelectric generator, which generates electricity from the heat released by the radioactive decay of plutonium-238 and gradually produces less power over time. That will require more conservative operations, Lee said, likening it to a phone charging more slowly on a weaker power source.

"We'll start seeing that and have to adjust our appetites in operations," Lee said. In the meantime, "there is a lot to keep us busy."

Finding the electrical discharges has solved a major Martian mystery, namely the origin of oxidants such as hydrogen peroxide on the Red Planet, which was discovered on Mars in 2003. These oxidants can react with organic molecules, potentially destroying biosignatures, while other chemical reactions triggered by the lightning can generate new organic molecules.

"This is exciting," Baptiste Chide of the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie in Toulouse told Space.com. "It opens a new field of investigation for Mars."

Chide led a team of Mars rover scientists to find evidence for the electrical discharges hidden in data from the most unexpected of instruments: Perseverance's microphone.

Chide's team discovered 55 electrical events across 29 hours' worth of microphone recordings, spread out across two Martian years. The recordings each have a distinct audio signature. Initially there is a burst of static, called the overshoot, that lasts less than 40 microseconds. The overshoot is followed by an exponential drop in signal lasting perhaps 8 milliseconds, depending on how far away the microphone is from the discharge. Both the overshoot and subsequent drop are not real acoustic noises: They are the result of interference in the microphone's electronics from the magnetic field generated by the discharge. The next part of the audio recordings is a real sound. This manifests as a second loud peak in the signal followed by smaller peaks, and these are caused by a modest shockwave produced by the flash of the lightning.

These electrical discharges are not forked lightning bolts lancing down from the sky like we have on Earth, because Mars does not have thunderstorms because it lacks atmospheric water. Instead, for the microphone to hear the electrical discharges, the discharges have to be much closer to the rover.

On Earth, lightning is caused mostly by friction between icy particles in the clouds. On Mars, it is friction between dust particles that prompts the discharges. We see something similar on Earth in volcanic plumes.

However, the conditions on Earth and Mars are very different, evident in their respective "breakdown threshold." This describes the point when clouds of particles that have become electrically charged are able to discharge.

"The breakdown threshold is higher on Earth than on Mars, and is primarily to do with pressure and also the composition of the atmosphere," Daniel Mitchard of Cardiff University told Space.com. Mitchard is a physicist who studies lightning, though he is not a member of the rover team and did not participate in this study.

Earth's predominantly nitrogen–oxygen atmosphere and Mars' mostly carbon-dioxide atmosphere are electrically insulating, meaning a lot of charge has to build up to overcome the insulating effect and discharge. Because the surface pressure on Earth is one atmosphere, it means that there is a lot of insulating atmosphere that lightning has to pass through, and so the breakdown threshold is quite high, three megavolts per square meter. On Mars, where the surface pressure is just 0.006 atmospheres, there is less insulating atmosphere for an electrical discharge to overcome, so the breakdown threshold is much less, around 15 kilovolts per square meter.

"So this means that we would generally expect lightning on Mars to be weaker than on Earth," said Mitchard, who likens Mars' electrical discharges to the static shock that you might receive rubbing a balloon or walking on an insulated flooring.

Of the 55 discharge events detected by Perseverance's microphone, 54 of them occurred during the top 30% of strongest winds recorded during the 29 hours of recordings. This strongly connects the discharges to localized winds that are able to loft dust into the air, as is commonly found at a dust-storm front. Sixteen of the events also coincided with dust devils passing very close to the rover — the most distant electrical discharge measured is estimated to have been just 6.2 feet (1.9 meters) from Perseverance. Some of the discharges were caused by dust grains in the air, while a handful were actually the rover becoming electrically charged to several kilovolts following collisions with airborne dust particles and then discharging into the ground.

However, the rover and its instruments are well protected from electrical mishap. Nevertheless, Chide and the rover team speculate that the Soviet Mars 3 mission, which landed on Mars in the middle of a dust storm in 1971 and was only active for 20 seconds before going kaput, could have been damaged by electrical discharges.

To ensure that future missions are fully protected, the microphone readings can guide the future design of Mars missions. "Now that we have quantitative data on the energy [of the discharges], we will be able to adjust the specification we put on the design of electronic boards and potentially have new constraints on the space suits needed for astronauts," said Chide.

So far, only the microphone has picked up evidence for the discharges. Could Perseverance's cameras potentially capture the flashes of these lightning bolts?

"Imaging the discharges would be hard," said Chide. This would be partly because many of them take place in the day when dust devils are most active, and those that would otherwise be bright enough might be obscured by dust. The flashes would also be very brief, lasting just microseconds, and most would be only millimeters in length – the largest bolts are those discharges from the rover itself, which extend several tens of centimeters to reach the Red Planet’s surface. To capture short, fast electrical discharges requires a high-speed, high-resolution camera that we don't currently have on Mars.

"Hopefully, more advanced cameras will eventually make their way there," said Mitchard. This is now more likely if planetary scientists wish to study the lightning in more detail in the future.

Even then, it would not be a simple matter. "We wouldn't really know where to point the camera," said Chide. "We'd have to be very lucky!"

Of more immediate interest is lightning's connection to oxidants such as hydrogen peroxide. Because such oxidants can react with and chemically alter organic compounds, the presence of lightning is of interest to astrobiologists seeking biosignatures on the Red Planet. In theory, areas with high concentrations of oxidants should experience more dust devil and storm activity and therefore more electrical discharges. For example, dust devil activity in Gusev crater, where the Spirit Mars Exploration Rover landed in 2004, is twenty times higher than in Jezero crater where Perseverance is, while there is barely any dust devil activity on Elysium Planitia. Does this match the distribution of oxidants on Mars, and could scientists improve their chances of finding biosignatures by sending life-seeking missions to areas of Mars that do not experience as many dust devils and dust storms?

"This is a good question," said Chide. "The quantification of the amount of oxidants produced by this new phenomenon will be the next step, requiring lab experiments and models."

Whereas lightning has already been discovered in the clouds of the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, this is the first time that electrical discharges have been discovered on a rocky planet other than Earth. It raises the possibility that similar phenomena could take place on Venus via dust or Saturn's moon Titan via icy grains.

Meanwhile, the Martian discharges could assist dust storms, since the electrical static reduces the threshold velocity needed for winds to lift dust particles off the surface in the first place, creating a positive feedback loop of dust being helped off the surface, becoming further electrified, which helps more dust to become airborne, and so on. As such, the electrification of the dust could play an important role in Mars' global dust cycle and hence what passes for its climate.

With thousands of smaller, regionalized dust storms every Martian year, it means that there are thousands of kilometers of electrified dust-storm front that could be crackling with tiny lightning bolts. The shocking story of the electrified Mars may not be over yet.

The research was published on Nov. 26 in the journal Nature.

Perseverance spotted an unusual "sculpted, high-standing" rock nestled among "low-lying, flat and fragmented surrounding rocks", which got the attention of scientists right away, according to a blog post posted Nov. 13 on NASA's website written by Candice Bedford, a research scientist at Purdue University. The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory rover spotted Phippsaksla on Sept. 2, initially using the left Mastcam-Z camera high on the rover's mast. Sept. 2 was Sol 1612 of the mission; a sol is a Martian day, which is slightly longer than Earth's.

Perseverance next used its laser instrument, known as SuperCam, to show that the nearly three-foot-long (31 inches, or 81 centimeters) rock is made of iron and nickel, which matches what we know about the composition of cores of large asteroids in the solar system. If its origin is confirmed, this would be Perseverance's first meteorite find since arriving at the Red Planet on Feb. 18, 2021.

Asteroids are large space rocks that are typically made of leftover material from when the solar system was formed, 4.5 billion years ago, before larger bodies like planets and moons came together. Meteoroids — smaller space rocks — often are fragments of asteroids, and if one of meteoroids makes it to the surface of a planet or moon, these are called meteorites.

The Perseverance rover team nicknames its science targets and sites for easy public identification. The suspected meteorite has been named "Phippsaksla", a name taken from an area in Svalbard, Norway. The site where the rock was found, "Vernodden," is also based on a location in Svalbard.

While this is Perseverance's first suspected meteorite find, it's far from the first space rock ever found on the Red Planet.

Perseverance's predecessor rover Curiosity, which has been active on the surface since 2012, has found several iron-nickel meteorites in the Gale crater region and a mountain it is climbing, called Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp. Notable examples include the huge, 39-inch (1-meter) "Lebanon" meteorite found in 2014, and another space rock nicknamed "Cacao", found in 2023.

The previous generation of NASA rovers were known as the Mars Exploration Rovers, which included Opportunity (operational on Mars from 2004 through 2018) and Spirit (2004-11). Since those robotic explorers also found several iron-nickel meteorites themselves, NASA officials had been surprised at Perseverance's lack of space rock finds.

For the past year or so, Perseverance has been carefully examining the rim of its landing site, Jezero crater. Bedford noted that Jezero crater should have more meteorites, "particularly given its similar age to Gale crater and number of smaller impact craters, suggesting that meteorites did fall on the crater floor, delta, and crater rim throughout time."

But hunting meteorites is just a side job for Perseverance. The rover landed on the floor of the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) crater with the primary mission of hunting for possible signs of past life on Mars and to gather samples for a possible future return to Earth.

Just last month, NASA announced the rover found tantalizing chemical fingerprints that might show evidence of chemical reactions between sediment and organic matter, but the rover's limited selection of instruments mean the samples would have to be hauled back to Earth before a conclusive determination could be made.

NASA's search for evidence of past life on Mars just produced an exciting update. On Sept. 10, 2025, a team of scientists published a paper detailing the Perseverance rover's investigation of a distinctive rock outcrop called Bright Angel on the edge of Mars' Jezero Crater. This outcrop is notable for its light-toned rocks with striking mineral nodules and multicolored, leopard print-like splotches.

By combining data from five scientific instruments, the team determined that these nodules formed through processes that could have involved microorganisms. While this finding is not direct evidence of life, it's a compelling discovery that planetary scientists hope to look into more closely.

To appreciate how discoveries like this one come about, it's helpful to understand how scientists engage with rover data — that is, how planetary scientists like me use robots like Perseverance on Mars as extensions of our own senses.

Experiencing Mars through data

When you strap on a virtual reality headset, you suddenly lose your orientation to the immediate surroundings, and your awareness is transported by light and sound to a fabricated environment. For Mars scientists working on rover mission teams, something very similar occurs when rovers send back their daily downlinks of data.

Several developers, including MarsVR, Planetary Visor and Access Mars, have actually worked to build virtual Mars environments for viewing with a virtual reality headset. However, much of Mars scientists' daily work instead involves analyzing numerical data visualized in graphs and plots. These datasets, produced by state-of-the-art sensors on Mars rovers, extend far beyond human vision and hearing.

Developing an intuition for interpreting these complex datasets takes years, if not entire careers. It is through this "mind-data connection" that scientists build mental models of Martian landscapes – models they then communicate to the world through scientific publications.

The robots' tool kit: Sensors and instruments

Five primary instruments on Perseverance, aided by machine learning algorithms, helped describe the unusual rock formations at a site called Beaver Falls and the past they record.

Robotic hands: Mounted on the rover's robotic arm are tools for blowing dust aside and abrading rock surfaces. These ensure the rover analyzes clean samples.

Cameras: Perseverance hosts 19 cameras for navigation, self-inspection and science. Five science-focused cameras played a key role in this study. These cameras captured details unseeable by human eyes, including magnified mineral textures and light in infrared wavelengths. Their images revealed that Bright Angel is a mudstone, a type of sedimentary rock formed from fine sediments deposited in water.

Spectrometers: Instruments such as SuperCam and SHERLOC – scanning habitable environments with Raman and luminescence for organics and chemicals – analyze how rocks reflect or emit light across a range of wavelengths. Think of this as taking hundreds of flash photographs of the same tiny spot, all in different "colors." These datasets, called spectra, revealed signs of water integrated into mineral structures in the rock and traces of organic molecules: the basic building blocks of life.

Subsurface radar: RIMFAX, the radar imager for Mars subsurface experiment, uses radio waves to peer beneath Mars' surface and map rock layers. At Beaver Falls, this showed the rocks were layered over other ancient terrains, likely due to the activity of a flowing river. Areas with persistently present water are better habitats for microbes than dry or intermittently wet locations.

X-ray chemistry: PIXL, the planetary instrument for X-ray lithochemistry, bombards rock surfaces with X-rays and observes how the rock glows or reflects them. This technique can tell researchers which elements and minerals the rock contains at a fine scale. PIXL revealed that the leopard-like spots found at Beaver Falls differed chemically from the surrounding rock. The spots resembled patterns on Earth formed by chemical reactions that are mediated by microbes underwater.

Together, these instruments produce a multifaceted picture of the Martian environment. Some datasets require significant processing, and refined machine learning algorithms help the mission teams turn that information into a more intuitive description of the Jezero Crater’s setting, past and present.

The challenge of uncertainty

Despite Perseverance's remarkable tools and processing software, uncertainty remains in the results. Science, especially when conducted remotely on another planet, is rarely black and white. In this case, the chemical signatures and mineral formations at Beaver Falls are suggestive – but not conclusive – of past life on Mars.

There actually are tools, such as mass spectrometers, that can show definitively whether a rock sample contains evidence of biological activity. However, these instruments are currently too fragile, heavy and power-intensive for Mars missions.

Fortunately, Perseverance has collected and sealed rock core samples from Beaver Falls and other promising sites in Jezero Crater with the goal of sending them back to Earth. If the current Mars sample return plan can retrieve these samples, laboratories on Earth can scrutinize them far more thoroughly than the rover was able to.

Investing in our robotic senses

This discovery is a testament to decades of NASA's sustained investment in Mars exploration and the work of engineering teams that developed these instruments. Yet these investments face an uncertain future.

The White House's budget office recently proposed cutting 47% of NASA’s science funding. Such reductions could curtail ongoing missions, including Perseverance's continued operations, which are targeted for a 23% cut, and jeopardize future plans such as the Mars sample return campaign, among many other missions.

Perseverance represents more than a machine. It is a proxy extending humanity’s senses across millions of miles to an alien world. These robotic explorers and the NASA science programs behind them are a key part of the United States' collective quest to answer profound questions about the universe and life beyond Earth.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

"We now have experimental validation that tumbleweed rovers could indeed operate and collect scientific data on Mars," James Kingsnorth of the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and head of science at Team Tumbleweed said in a statement.

The idea behind the Tumbleweed project is to design large-scale, low-cost robotic rovers that can cover great swathes of the Martian surface while driven purely by the breeze.

Whereas the final planned tumbleweed rovers would be 16 feet (five meter) across, in April 2025, Team Tumbleweed tested a half-size prototype called the Tumbleweed Science Testbed in a disused quarry in the Netherlands. The team proved that even off-the-shelf instruments could collect environmental data while the rover tumbled roughly across the terrain.

Then, in July 2025, Team Tumbleweed headed to Aarhus University's Planetary Environment Facility in Denmark to test small 11.8-, 15.7- and 19.7-inch (30-, 40- and 50-centimeter) prototypes in a wind tunnel.

The prototypes were spherical wire frames containing sails; in the wind tunnel, they were put through their paces on different surfaces, including rough and smooth terrain, sand, pebbles and boulder fields. They were then blown by different wind speeds and all under a low surface pressure of 17 millibars to mimic conditions on the Red Planet.

The tests showed that wind speeds as low as 30 to 33 feet per second (9 to 10 meters per second) were sufficient to push the tumbleweed rovers, while onboard sensors were successful in capturing data as the rovers tumbled. The prototypes were even able to ascend slopes of 11.5 degrees pushed only by the wind. While this does not sound terribly steep, this was in Earth's gravity — in the lower gravity of Mars, this would be equivalent to a 30 degree slope.

"Experiments with the prototypes in the Aarhus wind tunnel have provided big insights into how tumbleweed rovers would operate on Mars," Mário João Carvalho de Pinto Balsemão, who is Team Tumbleweed's mission scientist at Universidad de Lisboa (Lisbon) in Portugal, said in the statement. "The results are conservative, as the weights of the scaled prototypes used in the experiments are exaggerated compared to the real thing, so the threshold wind speeds for setting the rovers rolling could be even less."

That's good news for the potential success of real tumbleweed rovers on Mars. Although measurements of near-surface wind speeds on Mars are sketchy, NASA's InSight lander was frequently shaken by winds stronger than 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) per second, while the Ingenuity helicopter also measured winds of similar strength.

“The results from Aarhus support our modeling, which shows that an average tumbleweed rover – following the daily shifts and day–night cycles of the wind — could travel about 422 kilometers [262 miles] over 100 Martian sols, with an average overall speed of about 0.36 kilometers [0.22 miles] per hour," said Balsemão. "In favorable conditions, the maximum range could be as much as 2,800 kilometers."

Swarms of tumbleweed rovers could transform our exploration of the Red Planet, capable of taking environmental data simultaneously from myriad locations to create wide maps of atmospheric and surface processes. At the end of their roving missions they can even collapse to form stationary platforms that can continue taking data for many years.

The team's next step is to head to the Atacama Desert in Chile in November to test the prototypes with more sensitive instruments to see if they can collect precision data while the rovers tumble over the terrain. Although currently the tumbleweed rover has not been adopted as a mission by any space agencies, by developing the technology it puts the project in prime position in the future to be selected to go to Mars.

The latest tumbleweed update was presented by Kingsnorth at the joint Europlanet Science Congress–AAS Division of Planetary Science meeting in Helsinki in September.

Edgar is one of the 10 people in NASA's 2025 astronaut class, which was announced this week at Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston. The new candidates are a diverse group of pilots, engineers, doctors and scientists selected to possibly launch on future missions to the moon and Mars. For Edgar, finding out she'd been chosen was a huge surprise.

"I was so excited. You know, totally shocked," she told Space.com in an interview the day of the announcement (Sept. 22). The first one she told about her big news? Her dog Coco. "I was walking around on the phone because I couldn't sit still as I'm having this conversation, and so she was chasing me through the house," Edgar said."She knew that something was up."

After Coco, Edgar immediately called her husband and family to celebrate.

She said that growing up in the Pacific Northwest gave her a love for the outdoors and an appreciation for the region's rich aviation history — influences that guided her toward her interests in geology and exploration. Edgar's fascination with space came from seeing a space shuttle launch in the second grade.

"I realized there were people onboard, and they were leaving the planet, and it made me wonder, 'What else is out there?'" Edgar said.

Her niece, who is in second grade, watched NASA's announcement online. Edgar pointed to the symmetry between the birth of her love for space and her niece's current age, and encouraged anyone who wants to become an astronaut to pursue that dream with everything they have.

"Don't give up," Edgar said. "Nothing is impossible, and it takes a lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds to contribute to what we're doing here in human exploration."

Edgar's path to becoming an astronaut candidate — or ASCAN, as they are affectionately referred to at NASA— was a rocky one, quite literally. Before her ASCAN selection, Edgar was working as deputy principal investigator on the Artemis 3 geology team, helping design the science goals for NASA's upcoming crewed mission to the lunar surface.

The 17 years preceding her work on Artemis were focused on supporting the Mars Curiosity rover and Mars Exploration Rover missions. She was also responsible for facilitating geology training for NASA engineers, mission teams and astronauts.

While her role in the mission has changed, Edgar doesn't see it as a paradigm shift. "I think I'm working towards the same goals that we had on those rover missions and on the Artemis 3 science team. I just get to serve in a slightly different role now, but the end goal is the same."

"Previously, I was working in a role where we were asking the astronauts … to conduct certain science tasks, or deploy an instrument, or make these observations. And suddenly I need to think through, like, 'Oh, wow, I might get to be that person doing some of these activities,' and you realize the high cognitive load that it takes to be operating in these challenging and remote environments while focusing on the mission objectives," Edgar said. "I'm excited to take on that new challenge."

One of those challenges may very well be a mission to the moon. NASA is targeting landing sites near the lunar south pole for its Artemis missions, which the agency hopes to evolve into a sustainable and continuous presence on the moon.

Edgar views the lunar south pole as a critical destination for advancing planetary science and for enabling humanity's push deeper into space. "That will be a really important place to go, from both a science perspective and also having a sustained presence and using that as a launching area to test a lot of things that we'll need for longer duration missions to Mars," she said.

NASA sees Artemis missions to the lunar surface as stepping stones, where technologies and techniques for long-term expeditions can be perfected on an eventual path to Mars. Edgar said that's something she's dreamed of.

Edgar said that she and many others on her rover teams often had to do their best to put themselves in the rovers' shoes and imagine themselves on the Martian surface, constantly thinking, "How would I connect this landscape in my mind?" And she's interested in going to Mars herself; Edgar said she "would welcome the opportunity if it ever came."

NASA's 2025 ASCANs will spend the next two years in intensive training at JSC and other NASA centers as they prepare to graduate to flight-ready astronauts. That training will cover a wide range of skills, including learning to fly various spacecraft, conducting spacewalk simulations, foreign language courses, science lessons and more.

Like the group's various backgrounds, NASA emphasizes diverse cross-familiarization to ensure that all astronauts have the skills they need to support one another in remote, potentially high-stress environments. "If you're the only people out there on a mission together, you need to be able to take care of each other and take care of the mission objectives," Edgar said.

She said she's especially looking forward to the group's geology training, and noted they will be trained in several different subspecialities.

"I think the composition of our class reflects the needs of the program," Edgar said. "We're going to need amazing pilots to fly to some of these really challenging environments. We're going to need people with medical backgrounds to keep us safe while we're on longer duration missions. We're going to need engineers. We're going to need scientists. And I think you're seeing that in the full class composition. It's really fun to learn from each other, and I can't wait to see everything that comes ahead."

One of the studies, led by Dr. Aleksandra Sokołowska of Brown University and Imperial College London, has identified 258 rockfalls around the Oxia Planum region using high-resolution imagery from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)

The rockfalls may expose material from beneath the Martian surface. Additionally, tracks carved by falling rocks or sliding debris could bring subsurface dirt into more accessible positions for rover samples.

"The discovery of rockfalls in Oxia Planum opens up the exciting possibility for the rover to increase the diversity of its samples with material that would otherwise be inaccessible," Sokołowska said in a statement.

Because the rocks were previously embedded in geological features, such as crater walls and cliff faces, some of their recently revealed surfaces might have been shielded from harsh radiation. That protection could increase the odds that organic molecules still exist intact here.

The second study, led by Ananya Srivastava of the University of Western Ontario, highlights layered clay deposits at Oxia Planum — clays are well noted for their ability to preserve organic materials.

Spectral and compositional data from MRO and ESA's Mars Express mission show alternating orange and blue layers in the clay in various thicknesses, suggesting the clays were transported from other areas of Mars via rivers and flood events.

"The clays could record a far wider range of ancient Martian climatic conditions than previously believed if they came in multiple pulses from various source regions," said Srivastava. "This diversity of environments improves the prospect that organic molecules were preserved under favourable conditions, strengthening the chances of uncovering the most thrilling discovery — clues for life beyond Earth."

The Rosalind Franklin rover, named after the pioneering British chemist whose photographic research was critical in revealing the double helix structure of DNA, is well-equipped to search for organic compounds at Oxia Planum. It houses a drill capable of reaching a depth of more than six feet (two meters) — deeper than any previous drill attempts on Mars.

Currently, the Rosalind Franklin rover — part of ESA's ExoMars program — is scheduled to launch in 2028 after facing years of setbacks. In the early 2000s, NASA agreed to provide ESA with crucial technologies for the rover, but the partnership ended in 2012 after former President Barack Obama cut funding for the mission.

Russia's Roscosmos filled the gap, and the rover was set to launch in 2022. Then came Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which ended Roscosmos' involvement in the project and pushed the launch date back.

NASA returned to the mission in 2024, but the partnership still faces an uncertain future. Proposed budget cuts under the Trump administration may see NASA pull out of the mission yet again. Hopefully, studies like the ones presented at EPSC-DPS will emphasize the importance of the Rosalind Franklin rover — and urge policymakers to keep NASA's participation intact.

What is it?

This photo, taken by Curiosity's Left Navigation Camera, shows the difference in texture of the Martian landscape, with Curiosity's mast shadow also visible.

Since landing on Mars in August 2012, one of Curiosity's major missions has been to understand the history recorded in the layers of Martian dirt. Sediments, minerals and textures all tell a story of changing environments: water, wind and possible ancient life. The "boxwork pattern" has become of particular interest to NASA scientists, as Gale Crater hosted rivers and streams in Mars' early history.

Where is it?

This photo was taken near Mount Sharp, which has an elevation of 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) above the floor of Gale Crater.

Why is it amazing?

The boxwork pattern refers to an area of low-lying ridges of bedrock that resemble a spiderweb shape from space. Orbiting spacecraft flagged these ridges as possibly being created by mineral-rich fluids long ago, which hardened some portions more than others. Then, over deep time, erosion removed the softer rock in between, leaving behind ridges that stand out.

By studying how the ridges, hollows and nodules differ in texture, chemistry, and structure, NASA scientists hope to better understand what early Mars was like and whether it could have hosted ancient life.

Want to learn more?

You can read more about Curiosity's mission and the continued hunt for clues to possible life on Mars.

Since February 2021, NASA's Perseverance rover has been exploring a region on Mars known as Jezero Crater, a huge cavity believed to have once hosted a lake. It's considered one of the most promising places to look for evidence of ancient life on the Red Planet (life as we know it, at least) — and there has been an update in the search.

On Wednesday (Sept. 10), researchers presented a study that describes how Perseverance found intriguing minerals on the western edge of Jezero Crater, in the clay-rich, mudstone rocks of a valley called "Neretva Vallis."

"When we see features like this in sediment on Earth, these minerals are often the byproduct of microbial metabolisms that are consuming organic matter," Joel Hurowitz, a planetary scientist at Stony Brook University in New York and lead author of the new study, said during a NASA press conference held on Wednesday.

So, could this mean we've finally found proof of aliens? Well, not quite. The authors stress that further analysis is necessary to identify the true origin of the minerals and determine whether they are indeed markers of life, otherwise known as "biosignatures," or the result of some other inorganic processes.

"I want to remind everyone that what we're describing here is a potential biosignature that is a characteristic element, molecule, substance or feature that might have a biological origin but requires more data or further study before reaching a conclusion about the presence or absence of life," Lindsay Hayes, Senior Scientist for Mars Exploration in the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters, said during the conference.

Either way, the findings do demonstrate that notably complex reactions once occurred on Mars — organic or not — adding yet more layers to the planet humans have been trying to decode since the dawn of astronomy.

To get into some specifics, the samples Perseverance collected that appear to harbor those exciting minerals were found in what's known as the "Bright Angel" formation within the northern margin of Neretva Vallis. Within that formation, one particular rock is of great interest to researchers. It's named "Cheyava Falls."

Not too long ago, when Cheyava Falls was first presented to the public, it made headlines around the world because scientists were openly fawning over the specimen's peculiar, dotty features that resembled "poppy seeds" and "leopard spots." The latter, which are millimeter-size blobs, are each surrounded by black rings that scientists determined contain iron and phosphate after studying them with Perseverance's toolkit. Both substances can result from chemical processes on Earth that are driven by microbes.

"These spots are a big surprise," David Flannery, an astrobiologist and member of the Perseverance science team from the Queensland University of Technology in Australia, said at the time. "On Earth, these types of features in rocks are often associated with the fossilized record of microbes living in the subsurface."

"What we saw in this rock were these layers of very fine-grained, rusty red mud stone that had in them these incredible features," Hurowitz said. "These textural features told us that something really interesting had happened in these rocks, some set of chemical reactions occurred at the time they were being deposited."

The natural next step was to have Perseverance examine Cheyava Falls (and other specimens associated with Bright Angel) a little more closely. On July 21, 2024, the rover even drilled into Cheyava Falls and collected a sample. This sample, the 25th that Perseverance had grabbed, is named Sapphire Canyon.

"I would describe the Sapphire Canyon sample as mysterious," Morgan Cable, a research scientist for Perseverance, previously said in a video about the core sample that NASA posted on April 10. "We see these signatures that tell us chemistry has happened, potentially involving organics — but what does that mean? Could life have been involved, or something that didn't involve life at all?"

That's sort of where the tale left off.

Now, what the new study appears to add to the story is a very detailed analysis of the Bright Angel bunch. Sure enough, the researchers found evidence that this outcrop really could be a solid lead in the quest to find proof of life beyond Earth. According to a release about the results, the team "identified tiny nodules and specks enriched in iron phosphate and iron sulfide. These features are associated with organic carbon and appear to have formed after sediment deposition, under low-temperature conditions."

The key seems to be the result that certain "redox" reactions could have occurred to give rise to these minerals. A redox reaction is a chemical reaction in which electrons are transferred between two substances; one of the substances is oxidized and the other is reduced.

"This organic carbon appears to have participated in post-depositional redox reactions that produced the observed iron-phosphate and iron-sulfide minerals," the study authors wrote.

"The exciting discovery of reduced iron phosphates and sulfides associated with organic compounds in the clay-rich mudstones of Jezero Crater suggests that the organic material might have been involved in the unusual redox reactions," states a News and Views article, written by Janice Bishop of SETI Institute in Mountain View, California and Mario Parente of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. This article was published in tandem with the study results.

"On Earth, microorganisms commonly interact with minerals and have been observed to convert sulfates (which contain oxidized sulfur atoms) to sulfides (which contain reduced sulfurs) in cold, oxygen-free Antarctic lakes," the News and Views article continues. "There is no evidence of microbes on Mars today, but if any had been present on ancient Mars, they too might have reduced sulfate minerals to form sulfides in such a lake at Jezero crater."

A few other results presented in the team's paper strengthen the case of a possible biosignature existing in Mars' Bright Angel formation as well. For instance, the new findings suggest the green-toned specks in muddy clay found in the outcrop could contain the mineral vivianite, which the News and Views authors say can specifically shed light on certain kinds of redox reactions that may have taken place on Mars.

All in all, however, there is one major underlying elephant in the room: For any further confirmation of whether evidence of Mars life lies in Perseverance's sample tubes, those sample tubes need to be returned to Earth. Unfortunately, as of now, NASA's Mars Sample Return program remains in limbo due to budget constraints, priority shifts since the Trump administration took the White House and a highly complicated blueprint for the mission.

Still, scientists continue to stress that there is only so much one can do when analyzing tiny rock samples while separated by a 140-million-mile (225-million-kilometer) stretch of the vacuum of space.

"We're pretty close to the limits of what the rover can do on the surface," Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance Project Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said during the conference. "That was by design. The payload of the Perseverance rover was selected with a Mars sample return effort in mind; the idea was for our payload to get us just up to the potential biosignature designation and have the rest of the story told by instruments here on Earth."

"Laboratory analyses of samples returned from Mars could also cast light on the potential for prebiotic — and even biological — chemistry to occur on worlds beyond Earth," the News and Views authors write.

UPDATE for 11 am ET: NASA's Perseverance rover has discovered sediment formations that could be signs of possible biosignatures on Mars, but they could also have a non-biological source. Read our developing story on the discovery.

NASA officials will unveil details about a new finding connected to a unique sample the Perseverance rover found on Mars today (Sept. 10) and you can watch it live online.

The conference will stream on the agency's website at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) and is expected to include some "visuals" during the discussion. You'll also be able to tune in right here on Space.com, as our homepage will carry the stream as well.

An official press release about the conference fosters some suspense, only offering a sparse explanation about the discovery. What it does say, however, is that Perseverance collected the rock at hand in July of 2024 from Jezero Crater — a location on Mars the rover has been exploring since February 2021 and which NASA believes could have once hosted life as we know it.

More specifically, the release says the rock is named "Sapphire Canyon" and comes from a place called "Neretva Vallis," which it explains as a "river valley carved by water rushing into Jezero Crater long ago."

And we do know some things about Sapphire Canyon in general.

For instance, NASA has previously described it as an arrowhead-shaped rock that was extracted from another "vein-filled rock" named "Cheyava Falls." Cheyava Falls is iconic for its "poppy seeds" and "leopard spots," patterns the Perseverance team noticed adorning the specimen when first observing it.

But Cheyava Falls is most well-known for something else. In a video about Sapphire Canyon, posted by NASA on April 10, 2025, Morgan Cable, a research scientist for Perseverance, says Cheyava Falls is "the only place we've found on Mars so far where we have chemical evidence that chemical reactions associated with life could have been happening, as well as organic molecules."

It is also of note that Sapphire Canyon is one of many samples the Perseverance team has been collecting with the hopes of bringing pieces of the Red Planet back to Earth one day. It's the 25th sample, to be exact. That sample-retrieval process was originally meant to be achieved with NASA's Mars Sample Return program — but due to budget constraints, a rather complex launch blueprint and priority shifts since the Trump administration took office, the fate of MSR hangs in doubt.

It is yet to be known whether the particular sample NASA will be talking about tomorrow will call for Earth-based analysis to follow, but based on the opinions of scientists who support MSR, it would be unsurprising if that turns out to be the case.

"I would describe the Sapphire Canyon sample as mysterious," Cable says in that April 10 video. "Could life have been involved? Or, something that didn't involve life at all? We're not going to know until we bring that sample back and do some more measurements."

According to the agency's release, a paper will be eventually be released to detail the finding; tomorrow's conference will be attended by the following agency officials:

• Sean Duffy, NASA's acting administrator
• Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington
• Lindsay Hays, Senior Scientist for Mars Exploration, Planetary Science Division, NASA Headquarters
• Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance Project Scientist, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California
• Joel Hurowitz, planetary scientist, Stony Brook University, New York

Recently, the rover captured a remarkable image from the summit of an outcrop named Soroya Ridge using its onboard Left Navigation Camera (Navcam).

What is it?

NASA's Perseverance rover launched in July 2020 and landed in Jezero Crater in 2021. The car-sized robot has since become a key tool in studying our planetary neighbor. Perseverance was built upon previous rover designs like Opportunity and Curiosity, but with a sharper focus on astrobiology and the long-term goal of returning Martian samples to Earth.

Where is it?

This photo was taken at the Soroya Ridge, southeast of the Jezero crater.

Why is it amazing?

Perseverance's primary mission is to search for signs of ancient microbial life and to collect samples of rock and soil that could one day be analyzed on Earth. To do this, it carries a suite of instruments for precise sample collection. These samples will eventually be retrieved by a proposed future mission, although its current status is in jeopardy.

Want to learn more?

You can read more about Mars rovers and looking for life on Mars.

The photo, taken on Aug. 13, reveals a field of these ridges at a site called Kerrlaguna, where Perseverance is investigating how Martian winds continue to shape the landscape. According to a recent NASA statement, this work is part of a broader effort to better understand Mars' modern environment.

"On Mars, the past is written in stone — but the present is written in sand," the statement says.

Megaripples are sandy ridges that rise up to about three feet (one meter) high. Found across much of the Martian surface, they fall in size between smaller ripples and larger sand dunes. Many are thought to be remnants from a time when Mars had a thicker atmosphere and stronger winds, possibly indicating shifts in climate over millions of years. Some even show signs of fractured crests, hinting at long-term exposure to changing conditions.

At Kerrlaguna, the megaripples are considered "inactive," meaning they haven't visibly shifted in recent years. Previous research has shown that unlike ripples on Earth, which shift constantly under the influence of wind and water, Martian megaripples consist of fine sand beneath a layer of coarse grains. This makes them more resistant to drifting by wind.

Still, high-resolution satellite observations have shown that some megaripples across Mars do move — albeit slowly, creeping about one meter every nine Earth years. While sluggish compared to active dunes, this movement is still evidence that the Martian surface is not geologically dead as was once thought, scientists say.

"The field is evolving in the sense that high-resolution images have finally been obtained over a long enough time span to allow the megaripple movement to be detected," Jim Zimbelman, a planetary geologist at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, previously told Astronomy Magazine.

Some of the most dynamic examples have been observed in Mars' north polar region, where wintertime carbon dioxide ice temporarily cements dunes and ripples. When spring arrives, the ice sublimates and summertime winds reawaken the movement of the sand.

To investigate the features at Kerrlaguna, Perseverance deployed several of its science instruments, including cameras and tools for analyzing the chemistry and structure of rock and soil. These help scientists study the size, layering and composition of sand grains, as well as detect salty crusts that may have formed over time.

Such crusts could hold clues about past interactions with water, and may even offer valuable resources for future human missions. These findings "help us prepare for the day when astronauts explore the Red Planet and need resources held within Martian soils to help them survive," the statement says.

The rover's stop at Kerrlaguna follows an earlier attempt to climb a rocky slope toward a site called Midtoya, where Perseverance struggled to make progress over loose, uneven terrain and ultimately turned back, the agency said.

Still, the effort yielded valuable data after the rover analyzed several rocks that likely rolled down from Midtoya, including one rock dubbed "Horneflya," which drew attention online for its unusual, medieval helmet-like shape.

This isn't NASA's first encounter with Martian sand formations. Nearly a decade ago, the Curiosity rover studied active dunes at "Namib Dune" and took one of its most iconic selfies there. But while active dunes provide dynamic views of surface change, scientists now see just as much value in studying the slower-moving, dust-covered megaripples like those at Kerrlaguna that help reveal how Mars has changed over time.

Perseverance's investigation at Kerrlaguna is only a preview, according to the statement. The rover is expected to continue south toward a larger field of megaripples at a site called "Lac de Charmes," where NASA plans a more in-depth campaign.

"While often the rover's attention is focused on studying processes in Mars' distant past that are recorded in ancient rocks, we still have much to learn about the modern Martian environment," the statement says.

Designed to survive extreme conditions and send back breathtaking images and vital data, these bots push the boundaries of what’s possible. But how well do you know the history, challenges, and clever tricks these rovers use to thrive on distant Martian terrain?

In this quiz, you'll navigate trivia that spans decades of space exploration.

Whether you're a seasoned stargazer or new to the galaxy of rover lore, this challenge is for you. Let’s roll!

Try it out below and see how well you score!

This week, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) released an enhanced-color mosaic of 96 separate images taken by Perseverance on May 26, 2025 that together create an 360-degree panorama of a location on Mars called "Falbreen." This area contains some of the oldest terrain Perseverance has ever explored on the Red Planet, according to JPL.

The image was taken on a day when the skies above NASA's Perseverance rover were clear, enabling the robotic explore to capture "one of the sharpest panoramas of its mission so far," according to a JPL statement.

The panorama was taken with Perseverance's Mastcam-Z instrument and depicts a rippling surface nearby as well as hills in the distance some 40 miles (65 kilometers) away from the rover. One of the most striking elements of the image is the blue skies overhead  — but don't be fooled. The Mars' skies never appear blue like Earth's, and only appear to be blue in the panorama due to processing.

"The relatively dust-free skies provide a clear view of the surrounding terrain,” Jim Bell, Mastcam-Z's principal investigator at Arizona State University, said in JPL's statement. "And in this particular mosaic, we have enhanced the color contrast, which accentuates the differences in the terrain and sky."

Aside from the blue sky, there is another element in this image that Perseverance's science team is excited about. A large rock visible to the right of the center of the mosaic is an example of what geologists refer to as a "float rock," in reference to a rock that was transported to its current location by water, wind, or even a landslide.

This particular float rock sits atop a crescent-shaped ripple of sand, but the Perseverance science team "suspects it got here before the sand ripple formed," according to the statement.

Also visible in the image is an abrasion patch, a 2-inch (5-centimeter) area of the Martian surface into which Perseverance drilled with its diamond-dust tipped grinder known as the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT), capable of spinning at 3,000 revolutions per minute.

A raw, more close-up image taken by Perseverance's Mastcam-Z instrument on the same day shows the abraded patch of the Martian surface in greater detail, revealing multiple cracks in the Red Planet's weathered surface.

Perseverance landed on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021 in a multi-stage sequence that included an atmospheric entry capsule. The capsule had opened to deploy a landing vehicle featuring a "sky crane" that lowered the rover safely to the Martian surface before flying away and crashing at a safe distance to avoid damaging the rover.

The roughly car-sized 2,260-lb (1,025-kilogram) Perseverance landed in a region of Mars known as Jezero Crater. Since then, it has been scouring the area for interesting geological features and collecting samples that NASA hopes to one day return to Earth.

However, the fate of that Mars Sample Return program hangs in the balance due to widespread budget cuts at NASA. Private companies have offered to step in, but whether or not we will ever see Perseverance's samples brought home remains unknown.

The robot team, along with the "Neal AI" chatbot and NASA astronaut Jonny Kim, worked together on tough tasks in a German site meant to simulate Mars terrain.

Kim took command of all four robots in July while orbiting Earth on the International Space Station (ISS). He beamed commands to a German space agency (DLR) facility in Oberpfaffenhofen, near Munich, to see how well the team could solve problems on the go.

The experiment's result? Enthusiasm.

"We have now achieved all the technical requirements for controlling complex robotic missions on Mars — and for a future permanent lunar research station," Alin Albu-Schäffer, director of DLR's institute of robotics and mechatronics, said in a statement.

Germany is a signatory of NASA's Artemis Accords, which involve a group of space-faring nations interested in exploring the moon — and doing so under norms established by the U.S. The moon has long been seen as an eventual stepping stone to Mars and, under the Trump administration, the Red Planet has come under even sharper focus.

Europe could be part of this picture as well. The DLR Surface Avatar experiment has been recruiting robots and astronauts since 2022. July's excursion was the fourth and final in the series of exercises. Past ISS residents such as NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Swedish project astronaut Marcus Wandt were among those controlling robots here on Earth.

Kim's work was even more difficult than that of his predecessors. For example, he had to help "rescue" Bert, who had a simulated leg injury: The experiment team deliberately jammed one of the robot's four legs.

"To find a stable gait for Bert with three legs, Jonny Kim conducted a 'training' session: he had the robot try out different gaits, and evaluated them, until Bert found a functioning three-legged strategy," DLR officials said in the statement.

Once Bert and Kim felt ready to keep going, the robot carried out its mission of exploring a series of Martian caves with mysterious drawings inside, which looked a little like the famed prehistoric art found in the Lascaux caves in France.

Given the tight quarters in the cave, Kim switched to manual control. "He could see what the robot was seeing through Bert's camera eyes, controlling it remotely using the joystick on the robot command terminal," DLR officials wrote.

Alongside Bert were three other robots that Kim could use together or separately, and with as much automation as he wished: DLR's four-legged Spot, the agency's humanoid robot "Rollin' Justin," and the Interact rover from the European Space Agency. (Bert even rode on Interact in a transport basket, after Kim accomplished the world's first robot-to-robot transfer, according to DLR.)

Among the group, only Spot had never been used before in Surface Avatar. Neal AI, the chatbot, gave real-time support, answering Kim's questions during the excursion.

Despite being the rookie of the crew, Spot was a good robot. Following Kim's instructions, Spot found several "sample containers" in the facility and brought them to a transfer area, using a gripper arm. Next, Rollin' Justin sent them to a Martian-like lander. The duo even piled up several "Martian" samples on their own, while Kim worked on other tasks.

"By involving an astronaut in microgravity and using relay satellites, we have overcome the technical hurdles involved in the remote control of robots," Thomas Krüger, team lead at ESA's human-robot interaction lab, said in the statement. Kruger noted that the experiments could also be useful for Gateway, NASA's planned moon-orbiting space station that's designed to support crewed and robotic Artemis missions on the lunar surface.

Kim capped the excursion by shaking hands — from orbit — with Germany-bound Neal Lii, a DLR scientist and principal investigator of Surface Avatar. (In the release, DLR did not specify whether Neal AI took its name from the human Neal.)

Rollin' Justin gave Lii and Kim a literal hand, using force feedback "to convey the force and movement of the handshake to both experiment partners," DLR officials wrote of the "emotional" moment.

Since landing in Gale Crater in 2012, Curiosity has traveled more than 22 miles (35 kilometers), studying rock layers, analyzing soil and revealing Mars' ancient past, including signs that the planet once harbored liquid water, a thicker atmosphere and conditions that might have supported microbial life. And despite the toll of time, including worn wheels and mechanical glitches, engineers have kept the rover rolling with creative workarounds, remote fixes and adaptive driving strategies.

Now, thanks to recent software upgrades, the rover has gained new autonomy that allows it to multitask and put itself to sleep early when it finishes its daily tasks, NASA said in a statement. This new ability helps conserve energy from its aging nuclear power source and extend its scientific lifespan, the statement read.

"We were more like cautious parents earlier in the mission," said Reidar Larsen, a flight systems engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, who led the team behind the new capabilities. "It's as if our teenage rover is maturing, and we're trusting it to take on more responsibility."

Curiosity, which is the size of a small SUV, is powered by a multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator (MMRTG), which converts heat from the natural decay of plutonium into electricity to recharge the rover's batteries. But as the plutonium decays, the system gradually produces less energy, meaning it takes longer to recharge the batteries and leaves less power for science each day.

To make the most of the diminishing energy supply, engineers have been working to boost the rover's efficiency by combining previously standalone tasks like driving, taking photos and transmitting data, according to the NASA statement.

By consolidating these activities, engineers have been able to shorten each day's operational plan, reducing the amount of time heaters and instruments need to stay powered on, saving valuable energy in the process, the statement read.

And instead of idling while waiting for new commands, Curiosity can now put itself to sleep as soon as it finishes the day's work. These small adjustments — even trimming just 10 or 20 minutes per day — can add up over time and help preserve power and extend the rover's mission, the agency wrote in the statement.

These new energy-saving habits come as the rover has spotted an eye-catching rock formation that resembles a piece of coral. Captured on July 24, 2025, the rock, nicknamed "Paposo," is about two inches (five centimeters) wide and was photographed using a camera perched at the end of the rover's robotic arm, according to the statement.

Paposo likely formed billions of years ago during a time when Mars was much wetter than it is today, the statement says. Mineral-rich water likely seeped into cracks in the rock, leaving behind hardened deposits. Over time, powerful winds would have sculpted the exposed material into the delicate, branching shape seen by the rover.

Curiosity is currently exploring a region rich in so-called "boxwork formations," a network of ridges that likely formed underground through ancient water activity. These features crisscross the lower slopes of Mount Sharp, the three-mile-high (five-kilometer-high) mountain above the floor of Gale Crater that the rover has been ascending for years.

All in all, Curiosity remains in good health, NASA says, bolstered by smart engineering, updated algorithms, and now, a little more rest.

"Together, these measures are doing their job to keep Curiosity as busy as ever," the agency's statement says

We know that, in the distant past, Mars was warmer than it is today and had liquid water on its surface. We can see evidence for this in the form of ancient river channels, deltas, lakes and even the eroded coastlines of a large sea in the north. Sometime in the past 3.5 billion years, Mars' atmosphere thinned and its water either froze or was lost to space. The question is, how did that happen?

NASA's MAVEN – Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN – mission arrived at the Red Planet in 2014 charged with studying the loss rate of Mars' atmospheric molecules to space. However, scientists know that the carbon in Mars' atmosphere, mostly in the form of carbon dioxide, cannot have been mostly lost to space. That's because the lighter carbon-12 would preferentially escape rather than the marginally heavier carbon-13 (the difference between the two being one extra neutron), but we don't see an excess of carbon-13 in Mars' atmosphere today.

The alternative is that Mars' atmospheric carbon must have rained out of the atmosphere and subsequently been locked away in the ground, in the form of carbonates embedded in sedimentary rock. The trouble is, searches for carbonates on Mars had always found nothing, until relatively recently.

Both current Mars rover missions – Curiosity climbing Mount Sharp in Gale crater and Perseverance exploring the river delta in Jezero Crater – have discovered carbonates, in the sedimentary rock that form Mount Sharp, and stretching tens of kilometers along the rim of Jezero.

Because carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, it can therefore regulate a planet's climate. Losing that carbon dioxide as it transforms into carbonate rocks would have had a drastic effect on Mars' climate.

To determine just how drastic, planetary scientists led by Edwin Kite of the University of Chicago modeled how losing its atmospheric carbon in carbonate rocks has affected how Mars' climate has changed over the past 3.5 billion years. This is coupled with the increase in solar luminosity as the sun brightens with age (in just over a billion years' time the sun will be too luminous and hot for life on Earth to survive). As the sun grew hotter, it breathed more heat onto Mars, increasing the planet's average temperature. This led to more precipitation, causing the carbon dioxide to rain out and become locked away as carbonate.

With the loss of the carbon dioxide's greenhouse effects, Mars cooled and grew drier. Intermittent spells of high temperatures and shallow liquid water were caused by orbital variations, similar to the Milankovitch cycles on Earth, which are periodic variations in the shape of Earth's orbit and the tilt of our planet's axis caused by the gravitational forces of the other planets, and which affect our long-term climate.

The difference between Earth and Mars is that our planet has been able to manage a continuous outgassing of carbon dioxide, mostly from volcanism, to maintain its presence in our atmosphere. Mars, which is about half the diameter of Earth, lost heat from its core more rapidly, which slowed down and ultimately – as far as we can tell – stopped Mars' volcanic activity. With no active volcanoes, or at least very few, there was nothing to replenish the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

These findings help explain the geological evidence of subsequent but increasingly less frequent bursts of liquid water on the surface of Mars during the past 3.5 billion years.

There is one caveat, which is that the study assumes that the abundance of carbonates at Gale crater is typical of the entire Red Planet. Carbonate samples need to be identified in many locations before we can say for sure that this was how Mars lost its greenhouse gas.

The research is published in Nature.

"Electrified dust will adhere to conducting surfaces such as wheels, solar panels and antennas. This may diminish the availability of solar energy, harm communications and complicate the motion of rovers and robots," Yoav Yair, a professor at Reichman University in Israel who studies planetary lightning and was not part of the new study, told Space.com.

The study, led by Varun Sheel, head of the Planetary Science Division at the Physical Research Laboratory in India, uses computer models to show how charges could be distributed inside a Martian dust devil. But before getting to how charge buildup works within Red Planet dust devils, it is key to understand how dust devils form on Mars to begin with.

As the sun heats the Martian surface, air near the surface gets heated. Hot air is lighter than cool air, and so it tends to rise. Pockets of hot air therefore rise through cold air, rapidly forming an upward current. The sudden uprush causes air to speed horizontally inward to the center of a newly forming vortex. If the conditions are right, the vortex completes formation and starts spinning. As the air continues to rise, the vortex gets stretched vertically — sort of like a noodle — making the vortex spin even more quickly. As the vortex picks up speed, the wind swirls and kicks up dust. This creates a dust devil.

In short, dust devils are like little gusts of dust high on adrenaline.

Dust devils are frequent on the dry and dusty Martian surface. Mars has lower gravity and a thinner atmosphere compared to Earth. This allows the wind there to kick up dust higher than wind on Earth can. As a result, Martian dust devils can be thrice as large as their terrestrial analogues. NASA's Viking was the first spacecraft to report dust devils on Mars. Later, Mars rovers like Curiosity and Perseverance captured dust devils zooming across the desolate Martian landscape. In general, such whirlwinds can pose a threat to landers and rovers — however, some rovers have actually benefited from dust devils. In 2005, a benevolent dust devil blew dust off the Spirit rover's solar panels, increasing its power levels. Dust devils on Mars, indeed, are a fascinating and curious phenomenon.

And deepening the intrigue, the new study suggests lightning could be zapping inside these dust devils on Mars.

The most common form of lightning on Earth is the one seen during a thunderstorm. As water and ice churn violently inside a thundercloud, they generate electrical charges due to friction. Once that happens, the atmosphere around the clouds doesn't let these charges flow through easily. This means the charges have nowhere to go and keep building up. At some point, the charges can't hold anymore — and they snap. The charges crack through the atmosphere in the form of an electrically conductive conduit, which we see as lightning.

Interestingly, the new study's team explains, a similar kind of churning happens inside dust devils on both Earth and Mars. In the case of dust devils rather than clouds, however, it's the dust particles that are getting churned instead of ice and water droplets. Again, friction builds up charges, and when the charges can't hold any more, the charges release in the form of lightning.

To be clear, the formation of a strong electric field precedes lightning and no direct observations of electric fields within dust devils on Mars have been found thus far. Instead, the study uses computer models to estimate the possible electric field strength and distribution within a Martian dust devil. This is, in fact, the first study to consider the size distribution of dust particles.

Sheel and his team found that when the atmosphere of Mars is laden with dust, the atmosphere becomes less conductive, prohibiting the flow of charges. This could cause a massive charge buildup in a dust-filled vortex, triggering lightning, he explains.

"The possibility that one day we can discover lightning [in these dust devils] is the most exciting aspect of the results," Sheel told Space.com.

In terms of distribution, the study found that larger, positively-charged particles would settle at the bottom of the dust devil while lighter, negatively-charged ones would rise upward. The team also found that larger dust particles would increase the possibility of lightning.

"[The paper] adds an original level of complexity by discussing size distributions," Yair said. "This is an important addition to the existing literature, with practical implications."

However, regarding the possibility of dust devils generating lightning, Yair says, "I am surprised that the authors discuss the probability of lightning inside the dust devil while neglecting the fact that highly charged dust may discharge at much lower electric fields … negating the possibility of lightning."

"In the end, predictions about lightning are very difficult because we don't fully understand how particles charge each other, not even really on Earth. … Ultimately, I think the question will be settled only [by] direct observations on Mars," Steven Desch, a professor of astrophysics at Arizona State University, who was also not involved in the study, told Space.com.

Some progress may have happened on that front, too.

A recent study — shared by a group led by Baptiste Chide of the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, France at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna in May — may have recorded the thunder from an electrical discharge. "Electrical discharges such as lightning are among the most energetic and remarkable phenomena in planetary atmospheres," write the authors in their paper. They studied sounds recorded by the SuperCam microphone onboard the NASA Perseverance rover on Mars. The recordings showed signs of coming from an electric discharge in a dust devil. This is the first such direct detection on Mars, setting the stage for newer discoveries by upcoming Mars missions such as the European Space Agency’s Rosalind Franklin rover.

The study was published in the journal Physics of Plasmas in March.

Earlier this month, the Perseverance rover used its abrasion tool to scrape away the top layer of a rocky Martian outcrop nicknamed "Kenmore," revealing a fresh surface for close-up analysis of the rock's composition and history. The procedure, which involves a combination of mechanical grinding and gas-blast cleaning, allows scientists to study rock interiors that haven't been altered by wind, radiation or dust over billions of years.

"Kenmore was a weird, uncooperative rock," Ken Farley, Perseverance's deputy project scientist, said in a statement. "Visually, it looked fine — the sort of rock we could get a good abrasion on and perhaps, if the science was right, perform a sample collection. But during abrasion, it vibrated all over the place and small chunks broke off. Fortunately, we managed to get just far enough below the surface to move forward with an analysis."

The recent abrasion marks a shift in the rover's focus from primarily scouting and sampling to more detailed in-situ science. Compared to its predecessors, Perseverance uses an advanced abrading bit and gaseous Dust Removal Tool, or gDRT, which applies five puffs of nitrogen to clear samples in a way that poses less risk of contamination. For comparison, earlier rovers used a brush instead to sweep debris, or tailings, out of the way.

After an abrasion is complete, Perseverance's science instruments are deployed to investigate the exposed rock. The rover's WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and Engineering) imager snaps close-up photos, while its SuperCam uses laser pulses to analyze the composition of vaporized material with one spectrometer and study visible and infrared light reflected from the freshly exposed surface with another.

"The tailings showed us that this rock contains clay minerals, which contain water as hydroxide molecules bound with iron and magnesium — relatively typical of ancient Mars clay minerals." Cathy Quantin-Nataf, SuperCam team member, said in the statement. "The abrasion spectra gave us the chemical composition of the rock, showing enhancements in iron and magnesium."

Perseverance also relies on its SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals) and PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry) instruments to help determine mineral content, chemical composition and potential signs of past water activity or even microbial life. In fact, not only did these tools find further evidence of clay, they also detected feldspar — a mineral common in Earth's crust as well as on the moon and other rocky planets. The team also found, for the first time, manganese hydroxide in the observed specimens.

"The data we obtain now from rocks like Kenmore will help future missions so they don't have to think about weird, uncooperative rocks," Farley said. "Instead, they'll have a much better idea whether you can easily drive over it, sample it, separate the hydrogen and oxygen contained inside for fuel, or if it would be suitable to use as construction material for a habitat."

The work is being carried out in Mars' Jezero Crater, a 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer-wide) basin that once hosted a river delta and lake. Scientists believe the region contains some of the best-preserved records of Mars' wet past, making it a prime location to search for biosignatures, or indicators of ancient life. Kenmore represents the 30th Martian rock that Perseverance has studied in such fine detail.

Perseverance is also continuing to collect rock core samples, which are being sealed in tubes and stored for a possible future return to Earth through the planned Mars Sample Return (MSR) campaign — though the Trump administration's recently released FY 2026 NASA budget proposal suggests cutting the MSR program altogether.

Why is the Perseverance rover so obsessed with this little labyrinth? It turns out the maze is a calibration target — one of 10 for Perseverance's Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals instrument, otherwise known for its fun acronym, SHERLOC.

This Sherlock Holmes–inspired tool is designed to detect organic compounds and other minerals on Mars that could indicate signs of ancient microbial life. To do that accurately, the system must be carefully calibrated, and that's where the maze comes in.

Located on the rover's seven-foot (2.1-meter) robotic arm, SHERLOC uses spectroscopic techniques — specifically Raman and fluorescence spectroscopy — to analyze Martian rocks. In order to ensure accurate measurements, it must routinely calibrate its tools using a set of reference materials with specific properties. These are mounted on a plate attached to the front of the rover's body: the SHERLOC Calibration Target.

"The calibration targets serve multiple purposes, which primarily include refining the SHERLOC wavelength calibration, calibrating the SHERLOC laser scanner mirror, and monitoring the focus and state of health of the laser," Kyle Uckert, deputy principal investigator for SHERLOC at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, tells Space.com

The target is arranged in two rows, each populated with small patches of carefully selected materials.

The top row includes three critical calibration materials: aluminum gallium nitride (AlGaN) on sapphire discs; the UV-scattering material Diffusil; and Martian meteorite SaU008, whose mineral makeup is already known and helps align wavelength calibration with real Martian geology.

This is also where you'll find the maze. Why a maze? "SHERLOC is all about solving puzzles, and what better puzzle than a maze!" says Uckert. The purpose of the maze target is to calibrate the positioning of the laser scanner mirror and characterize the laser's focus, which requires a target with sharply contrasting spectral responses. The maze serves this purpose well."

The maze is made of chrome-plated lines just 200 microns thick (about twice the width of a human hair) printed onto silica glass. "There are no repeating patterns and the spectrum of the chrome plating is distinct from the underlying silica glass," says Uckert. That makes it possible to measure the laser's focus and accuracy with extreme precision.

If you look closely at the maze, you'll also notice a Sherlock Holmes portrait right at the center. While it's a cheeky nod to the instrument's name, it serves a practical function. "SHERLOC spectral maps can resolve the 200 micron thick chrome plated lines and the 50 micron thick silhouette of Sherlock Holmes at the center of the maze," Uckert notes.

Like the portrait, the bottom half of the SHERLOC Calibration Target also serves a dual purpose: spectral instrument calibration and spacesuit material testing. It contains five samples of materials used in modern spacesuits, including some materials you might be familiar with, like Teflon, Gore-Tex, and Kevlar. And don't miss the "fun" target in this row — there's a geocache marker backing a polycarbonate target, and it does indeed have a tie-in to Sherlock Holmes.

These materials are actively being tested under Mars conditions to determine how they hold up over time in situ, which is crucial for planning human exploration of the Red Planet. "Note that we use all of these materials to fine-tune SHERLOC," adds Uckert. "As a bonus, the spacesuit materials support unique science that will help keep future astronauts safe."

Now, if all these Sherlock Holmes–related Easter eggs on the SHERLOC Calibration Target aren't enough for you, there's one final link. SHERLOC has a color camera as part of its instrumentation suite that sometimes images the target, and it's called the Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering.

Yes, SHERLOC's sidekick is called WATSON.

Scientists created the Mars rover's newest self-portrait by stitching together 59 individual images taken by Perseverance's camera, which is located at the end of its robotic arm. Each shot required the arm to be precisely positioned, involving 62 carefully coordinated movements over the course of about an hour, according to a NASA statement.

"But it's worth it," Megan Wu, an imaging scientist at the Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, said in the statement. "Having the dust devil in the background makes it a classic — this is a great shot."

Thanks to clear skies and the high angle of the sun, the photo captured that dust devil from nearly three miles (five kilometers) away. As can be seen, the devil is swirling behind a hill.

The image reveals not only Perseverance's dust-coated hardware but also the rugged terrain of Witch Hazel Hill, a region perched on the western rim of Jezero Crater where the rover has been conducting scientific investigations since December of last year. This area is of much interest to scientists seeking clues about a time when Mars had a vastly different climate than it does today.

In recent months, the rover has been reveling in a scientific bonanza, finding a diverse array of rocks at its fastest-yet pace of data collection. It also made skywatching history when it spied auroras in Mars' skies, becoming the first spacecraft to witness the curtains of light from the surface of another planet.

Since its landing in February of 2021, Perseverance has traveled more than 22 miles (36 kilometers) across the Martian surface, analyzed 37 rocks and boulders, and collected 26 rock cores. The latest portrait "gives us a great view of the terrain and the rover hardware," Justin Maki, Perseverance imaging lead at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said in the statement.

"We may be a bit dusty, but our beauty is more than skin deep," Art Thompson, Perseverance project manager at JPL, said in the statement. "Our amazing instruments continue to provide data that will feed scientific discoveries for years to come."

NASA's Perseverance rover captured this pre-dawn view of Mars' moon Deimos hanging over a dimly-lit Martian vista.

What is it?

Unlike Earth's moon, which is roughly one-fourth the planet's size, Deimos is less than 1/500th the size of Mars. That means when seen in the night sky — as spotted here at 4:27 a.m. local time on March 1, 2025, the 1,433rd Martian day, or sol, of Perseverance's mission — it appears more like a star than it does a celestial body.

Deimos measures only 7.8 miles (12.6 kilometers) across.

Where is it?

Deimos completes one orbit around Mars every 30 hours and 17 minutes at an average distance of 14,576 miles (23,458 kilometers) from the Martian surface.

At the time this photo was taken, the Perseverance rover was making its way to a location called "Witch Hazel Hill."

Another feature, "Woodstock Crater," at center right, is roughly a half-mile (750 meters) away from the rover.

Why is it amazing?

This vista is the product of 16 individual shots, which Perseverance assembled into a single photo that it then transmitted to Earth.

In the dark before dawn, the rover's left navigation camera needed to use its maximum long-exposure time of 3.28 seconds for each of the 16 snaps. In total, the image represents an exposure time of about 52 seconds.

The image is hazy because the low light and long exposures can add digital noise to Perseverance's images. Many of the white specks in the sky are likely noise, with others the effects of cosmic rays. Two of the brighter white specks are Regulus and Algieba, stars that are part of the constellation Leo.

Want to know more?

You can read more about Deimos and NASA's Perseverance Mars rover.

You can also read about another sight in the Martian sky, as Perseverance has become the first spacecraft to spot auroras from the surface of another world.

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have for years been intently plotting out plans to send future spacecraft to Mars and haul those Perseverance-plucked bits, pieces, and sniffs of atmosphere to Earth for rigorous inspection by state-of-the-art equipment.

But President Trump's Fiscal Year 2026 proposed budget blueprint issued on May 2 by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) calls for a 24.3 percent reduction to NASA's top-line funding and could slashing the space agency's science budget by 47 percent. A casualty stemming from this projected budget bombshell is the Mars Sample Return (MSR) venture.

In fact, MSR is tagged in the White House's proposed 2026 budget as "grossly over budget and whose goals would be achieved by human missions to Mars," explaining that MSR is not scheduled to return samples until the 2030s.

The preliminary White House budget says its intent is in line with the Administration's objectives of "returning to the moon before China and putting a man on Mars," with the budget reducing lower priority research and terminating unaffordable missions such as MSR.

But some experts say that the mission still has a wealth of scientific and spaceflight returns to offer that are in line with the administration's push to put humans on Mars.

Sticker shock

To understand why that mission got so costly, we must look to spaceflight history courtesy of John Connolly, a 36-year NASA veteran that directed human lunar and Mars mission designs. He is now professor of practice at Texas A&M University's Department of Aerospace Engineering.

Mars Sample Return has been on NASA's radar since mid-1970's studies to modify a Viking Mars lander to perform a relatively simple sample return, Connolly told Space.com. "It has always been thought of as the Holy Grail of Mars robotic missions, and has been studied extensively now for five decades."

Over those decades, MSR has also grown more complex, Connolly said. The original 1970's concepts did not address the most recent requirements for planetary protection or the need for carefully selected samples.

"The growth of the MSR requirements set has naturally increased the complexity and cost at each iteration of the MSR mission concept until we reached the current design of a multi-launch, multi-spacecraft, multi-sample-handoff mission," said Connolly.

Indeed, over recent years, multiple reviews of the MSR project by independent groups have flagged MSR sticker shock.

A last estimate was about $11 billion, with samples being returned to Earth in 2040, deemed by NASA itself as too costly and not being accomplished within an acceptable time frame.

Last year, yet another appraisal group ended up finding it feasible to return Mars samples as early as 2035 for a cost of some $8 billion.

Risk reduction

"Our understanding of Mars has gotten to the point that the questions we're asking can best be addressed with returned samples," said Bruce Jakosky, a senior research scientist and professor emeritus at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder.

"To decide not to return them, or to put it off to an indefinite future time with human missions would be to take a major step back in exploring the solar system and the universe and in continuing to develop our scientific understanding of the world around us," Jakosky said.

Returning samples from Mars will enable "risk reduction" for human missions, Jakosky added. It would allow us to determine the risk to human health from Martian dust and from chemicals that might be present in the dust that could be harmful, he added, such as toxic perchlorates that have been previously identified on Mars.

Jakosky also emphasized that returning Mars samples to Earth would resolve technical problems in advance of sending humans. "It would demonstrate the first round-trip travel to Mars," he said, "and it would allow us to solve important problems in planetary protection so that we don't put the Earth at risk from possible Martian microbes."

Of like mind is John Rummel, a former and founding chair of the panel on planetary protection of the COSPAR, an international confab of experts. He previously worked at NASA Headquarters (1986 to 1993 and 1998 to 2008) as the space agency's senior scientist for astrobiology and as NASA's Planetary Protection Officer.

"There is much we would like to know about the environment of Mars — dust, for example — before bathing people in it. Mars Sample Return is one way of getting that information, while proving we can do a safe round-trip. Doing something similar with a crew in the loop could provide for a faster progression to a safe stay on Mars — but safety needs to be a strong consideration for both the crew and their eventual return to Earth," said Rummel.

Forward thinking

"The Mars dream is back," views Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society. He views the MSR cancellation differently, attaching his forward thinking vision to Elon Musk's still-in-the-works SpaceX Starship launch system.

Zubrin envisions initial use of lots of robotic Mars scouts, then a robotic expedition, followed by humans to Mars.

"I think that's possible, but would require total focus by NASA, SpaceX, Musk, and the Trump administration," Zubrin said. That said, however, he contends the Trump budget for NASA as it now stands is already moving to wreck the first two stages of the plan by trying to wreck NASA's Mars Exploration Program.

"They need to change course," Zubrin advised. "If they do, a wave of robotic scouts in 2028, a robotic expedition in 2031 followed by a human mission in 2033 could still be pulled off," he said.

Underlying rationale

For Jakosky, he recognizes that "science" is not the only reason to send humans to Mars.

"NASA also identifies national posture and inspiration as compelling means. But all of these fall apart if we end up sending people as a publicity stunt, to just to what has been called 'flags and footprints.' The underlying rationale for sending people has to be compelling enough to justify the risk to those people and the cost of the missions," Jakosky said.

Science can provide much of that rationale, concludes Jakosky. "We have the opportunity today to implement the science in a way that makes sense from a programmatic, budgetary, and risk perspective. And isn't that what space exploration is all about?"

On Feb. 28, MRO's HiRISE (High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera captured NASA's Curiosity rover making tracks across Mars' huge Gale Crater.

MRO has spotted Curiosity before, but the car-sized rover had always been stationary in those cases. The newly released photo "is believed to be the first orbital image of the rover mid-drive across the Red Planet," NASA officials said in a statement today (April 24).

The rover tracks seen in the HiRISE image cover about 1,050 feet (320 meters) and will likely last for months before the Martian wind erases them, agency officials added.

"They represent roughly 11 drives starting on Feb. 2 as Curiosity trucked along at a top speed of 0.1 mph (0.16 kph) from Gediz Vallis channel on the journey to its next science stop: a region with potential boxwork formations, possibly made by groundwater billions of years ago," they wrote in the statement.

Related: Curiosity rover: The ultimate guide

Curiosity landed on the floor of the 96-mile-wide (154 km) Gale Crater in August 2012, on a mission to assess the area's past potential to host life as we know it.

The rover's work has been extremely intriguing to astrobiologists, showing that Gale was indeed a habitable environment long ago: The area hosted a long-lived lake-and-stream system that had the ingredients for life, as well as a possible chemical energy source that could support microbial metabolism.

MRO has been operating at the Red Planet even longer than Curiosity, reaching Mars orbit in March 2006. As the new photo shows, MRO is still going strong, hunting for signs of past water activity on the Red Planet, serving as a communications relay for surface craft like Curiosity and its younger cousin, Perseverance — and keeping tabs on these robots' movements from time to time as well.

Carbonate minerals form when carbon dioxide interacts with water and rock, making them an important marker of past environmental conditions. Scientists have spotted these minerals before on Mars — by rovers on the ground, orbiters above, and even in Martian meteorites that fell to Earth — but Curiosity's latest data adds exciting new details.

"It tells us that the planet was habitable and that the models for habitability are correct," said the study's lead author, Ben Tutolo, associate professor with the Department of Earth, Energy and Environment in the Faculty of Science at the University of Calgary, in a statement.

The minerals found by the rover likely formed in extremely dry conditions through chemical reactions between water and rock followed by the process of evaporation. This process points to a time when Mars had a thick enough atmosphere, rich in carbon dioxide, to support liquid water on the surface. However, as the atmosphere thinned, that carbon dioxide would have begun turning into stone.

One standout mineral in Curiosity's new discovery is siderite, an iron-rich carbonate found in surprisingly high amounts — between five and 10% by weight — alongside salts that dissolve easily in water. "The broader implications are the planet was habitable up until this time, but then, as the [carbon dioxide] that had been warming the planet started to precipitate as siderite, it likely impacted Mars' ability to stay warm," said Tutolo.

What makes this find even more fascinating is the presence of iron oxyhydroxides in the same deposits. These minerals suggest Mars may have once also had a functioning carbon cycle — similar to Earth's — where some of the carbon dioxide locked in rocks eventually made its way back into the atmosphere.

By comparing Curiosity's findings with orbital data, scientists believe similar layers across the planet could have trapped up to 36 millibars' worth of atmospheric carbon dioxide — enough to dramatically change Mars' climate.

This Martian discovery also ties in closely with work being done right here on Earth. Tutolo says he's been exploring ways to combat climate change by turning human-made carbon dioxide into stable carbonate minerals — essentially locking carbon away in rock.

"What we're trying to do on Earth to fight climate change is something that nature may have already done on Mars," he said. "Learning about the mechanisms of making these minerals on Mars helps us to better understand how we can do it here. Studying the collapse of Mars' warm and wet early days also tells us that habitability is a very fragile thing."

The Perseverance rover is currently exploring Mars hills, boulders and rocky outcrops along the rim of Jezero Crater, a dry, bowl-shaped depression north of the Martian equator that likely held a lake billions of years ago. Since reaching the crater's western rim in December of last year, the rover has focused its attention on the layered terrain of a tall slope called Witch Hazel Hill, which could hold clues to a period when Mars had a vastly different climate. In the past few months alone, the car-sized Perseverance has collected samples of five rocks, performed detailed analysis on seven others, and zapped an additional 83 with its laser for remote study — the robotic explorer's fastest pace of scientific data collection since it landed on the Red Planet four years ago, NASA says.

"During previous science campaigns in Jezero, it could take several months to find a rock that was significantly different from the last rock we sampled and scientifically unique enough for sampling," Katie Morgan, who is the Perseverance's project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in a statement. "But up here on the crater rim, there are new and intriguing rocks everywhere the rover turns. It has been all we had hoped for and more."

The crater's western rim is proving to be a scientific goldmine because it contains lots of fragmented, once-molten rocks that had been blasted from deep beneath the surface billions of years ago by meteor impacts, possibly including the impact that created Jezero Crater itself, according to the statement.

Of key interest to astronomers is Perseverance's first crater rim sample, named Silver Mountain, which is a "one-of-a-kind treasure" likely dating back at least 3.9 billion years to the Noachian age — an early Martian period of heavy bombardment that shaped the planet's cratered landscape we see today, NASA recently said.

"My 26th sample, known as 'Silver Mountain,' has textures unlike anything we've seen before," the rover's official X account posted in February.

Not far away, the rover also found a rock rich in serpentine minerals, which typically form when water interacts with certain volcanic rocks. Scientists say this process can sometimes create hydrogen, a potential energy source for life as we know it here on Earth.

"The last four months have been a whirlwind for the science team, and we still feel that Witch Hazel Hill has more to tell us," said Morgan. "We'll use all the rover data gathered recently to decide if and where to collect the next sample from the crater rim."

"Crater rims — you gotta love 'em," she added.

Scientists are eager to return these and other samples Perseverance collected to Earth to determine whether there was ever life on the now-barren Mars. The fate of NASA's Mars Sample Return mission, however, continues to remain uncertain as the highly complex and technologically-challenging endeavor faces budget, schedule and engineering hurdles.

After cost projections soared to $11 billion and the sample return timeline stretched to no earlier than 2040, NASA began a complete overhaul of the plan and solicited new proposals from industry and academia to find a more affordable and faster way to return the samples to Earth. The agency's decision on the revised strategy isn't expected until mid-2026.

On its 4,500th sol (or Martian day), NASA's Mars rover Curiosity continued its climb of Mount Sharp (Aeolis Mons) at the center of Gale Crater. Before it can ascend higher, though, the six-wheeled rover needs to navigate a small ridgeline, which mission scientists have dubbed "Devil's Gate" (on the right side of this image).

Why is this amazing?

"The blocks scattered around the base of Devil’s Gate are ripe with interesting structures, which motivated the acquisition of an RMI [Remote Micro-Imager] mosaic across the ridge," wrote planetary geologist Michelle Minitti in a mission update. "Those blocks are also inconvenient for driving and parking the rover with all six wheels firmly on the ground."

"Our last drive ended with our front wheels not quite on solid ground," she said.

Why is this area of interest?

Despite being a navigation challenge, the rocks in front of the rover have complex textures and structures. Mission managers used Curiosity's science tools to analyze the chemical content of the rocks and captured a stereo mosaic image to provide a three-dimensional view of its structures.

"Devil’s Gate was not the only feature that the team was excited to image," wrote Minitti. "ChemCam added a second RMI mosaic along the base of 'Texoli' butte, which you can see the flank of on the left side of the image above. Mastcam [also] planned a mosaic across an expanse of bedrock that looks like rolling waves frozen in place at 'Maidenhair Falls.'"

What's next for Curiosity at Devil's Gate?

According to Minitti, the mission team plans to drive Curiosity further around the base of the ridgeline, before using the rover's cameras to look back on the path it has recently traveled.

"The sky gets a lot of attention in this plan with suites of observations taken at two different times — near midday and early morning — to assess variability across the day. Each window of time had Navcam dust-devil and cloud movies, and measurements of the amount of dust in the atmosphere," wrote Minitti. "The early morning block of observations also had multiple cloud movies cover the full sky."

Where can I learn more?

You can read an overview of Curiosity's mission on Mars and the recent news of its discovery the largest organic molecules ever seen on the red planet.

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover captured a giant dust devil devouring a smaller storm swirling close behind it on the rim of Jezero Crater.

Martian dust devils are spinning columns of warm air that pick up dust and debris as they move across the surface of the Red Planet. Perseverance spied the two merging storms on Jan. 25, while exploring the western rim of Mars' Jezero Crater at a location called "Witch Hazel Hill."

"Convective vortices — aka dust devils — can be rather fiendish," Mark Lemmon, a Perseverance scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said in a statement from NASA sharing the video footage of the merging storms.

"These mini-twisters wander the surface of Mars, picking up dust as they go and lowering the visibility in their immediate area," Lemmon added. "If two dust devils happen upon each other, they can either obliterate one another or merge, with the stronger one consuming the weaker."

Related: Perseverance rover: Everything you need to know

Perseverance captured images of the Red Planet storms using one of its navigation cameras. The rover was about 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) from the two merging storms, which were approximately 16 feet (5 meters) wide and 210 feet (65 m) wide, respectively.

"Dust devils play a significant role in Martian weather patterns," Katie Stack Morgan, project scientist for the Perseverance rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in the statement. "Dust devil study is important because these phenomena indicate atmospheric conditions, such as prevailing wind directions and speed, and are responsible for about half the dust in the Martian atmosphere."

In addition to the two merging dust storms captured in the video foreground, two other dust devils can be seen in the background to the left and center, highlighting just how frequently such storms occur on Mars.

The European Space Agency (ESA) announced on Sunday (March 30) that it has picked Airbus to design and build the landing platform for its life-hunting Mars rover Rosalind Franklin, which is scheduled to launch in 2028.

Rosalind Franklin is a key piece of the ExoMars project, which was originally a partnership between ESA and Russia. Europe cut those ties shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, however, requiring key mission parameters to be reformulated.

Chief among those parameters were the launch vehicle, originally a Russian Proton rocket, and the landing platform, a Russian craft named Kazachok. Both are now out of the picture.

Related: Europe will issue new ExoMars lander contract in a few months for beleaguered Mars rover (exclusive)

Airbus teams in the United Kingdom will design the new ExoMars lander, which includes the landing platform and the propulsion system that will help slow Rosalind Franklin down on its way to the Martian surface, among other components.

"Getting the Rosalind Franklin rover onto the surface of Mars is a huge international challenge and the culmination of more than 20 years' work," Kata Escott, managing director at Airbus Defense and Space, U.K., said in an ESA statement. "The mission will supercharge our space know-how in the U.K. and will advance our collective understanding of our solar system."

The Airbus lander contract is worth 150 million pounds (about $194 million US), according to the U.K. Department of Science, Innovation and Technology.

Rosalind Franklin is Europe's first-ever Red Planet rover. The wheeled robot will hunt for signs of Mars life with a variety of instruments and other gear, including a drill that will allow it to collect samples the lie up to 6.5 feet (2 meters) beneath the world's surface.

Rosalind Franklin will launch from the United States aboard a rocket selected by NASA, as the agency is a mission partner. If all goes according to plan, the rover will touch down in 2030 in Oxia Planum, a plain in the northern hemisphere of Mars that harbors evidence of past water activity.

Named "St. Pauls Bay" by the mission team, the Mars rock features hundreds of millimeter-size dark gray spheres, some of which have tiny pinholes. Perseverance discovered this rock on March 11 on the rim of the Jezero Crater, an ancient lakebed that the rover has been exploring since 2021 for signs of past microbial life. Scientists say determining the geological origins of this area's features could provide valuable insights into how rocks in the region evolved over billions of years.

"Placing these features in geologic context will be critical for understanding their origin, and determining their significance for the geological history of the Jezero crater rim and beyond," the Perseverance team wrote in a statement.

The St. Pauls Bay rock is located on the slopes of the Witch Hazel Hill area, a scientifically significant rocky outcrop spanning more than 330 feet (101 meters), with each of its rock layers acting like a page in the book of Mars' history. According to the statement about the new sphere-studded specimen, however, this rock may have floated in from elsewhere.

Speaking of elsewhere on the Red Planet, NASA's Opportunity and Curiosity rovers previously spotted similarly textured rocks near their respective landing sites, Endurance and Gale craters, which scientists have interpreted as concretions formed by the interaction of groundwater circulating through the rocks' pores. Last year, Perseverance itself spotted popcorn-like textured rocks that also suggest groundwater once flowed through them.

However, these formations can also arise from volcanic processes, such as the rapid cooling of molten rock droplets during an eruption, or from meteorite impacts, upon which vaporized rocks condense.

"Each of these formation mechanisms would have vastly different implications for the evolution of these rocks, so the team is working hard to determine their context and origin," the mission team said in the statement.

The rover is currently on a bonus mission exploring the rim of Jezero Crater, where ancient Martian groundwater may have interacted with rocks in a way that created an environment completely different from what the rover had previously explored on the crater floor. The samples it has collected, including one with intriguing features resembling leopard spots and poppy seeds which scientists suspect could be evidence of ancient microbial activity, are in 30 cigar-sized tubes awaiting pickup by NASA's complex Mars Sample Return mission.

The ambitious effort is undergoing an overhaul after it ran into cost and schedule overruns. Former NASA administrator Bill Nelson announced earlier this year that the agency is leaving two alternate mission plans for the Trump administration to return the samples home, each of which would require Congress to allocate $300 million for it to start launch proceedings by 2030 and return the samples between 2035 and 2039.

In November 2022, NASA's Curiosity rover imaged the Amapari Marker Band in the foothills of Mount Sharp, located in Gale Crater. Within the marker band itself — a thin, dark layer of rock — scientists recognized wave ripples in what would've once been a sandy shoreline. A few weeks later, Curiosity imaged another set of wave ripples in the nearby Prow outcrop, which would have been on the lake bed.

The ripples are thought to have formed some 3.7 billion years ago, during a period when Mars was thought to be drying up. But their presence indicates that Mars' climate would have been fairly warm — and its surface wet — at the time. "The shape of the ripples could only have been formed under water that was open to the atmosphere and acted upon by wind," California Institute of Technology (Caltech) postdoctoral researcher Caire Mondro said in a statement. And if the water was blown by wind, that means it was not covered in ice, as some scientists have hypothesized.

From these ripples, researchers not only determined the existence of a shallow lake here, but also its depth. Using a computer model, Caltech professor of geology Michael Lamb found that the size and spacing of the ripples indicate the lake was less than six feet (two meters) deep.

"Earlier missions, beginning with Opportunity in 2004, discovered ripples formed by water flowing across the surface of ancient Mars, but it was uncertain if that water ever pooled to form lakes or shallow seas," John Grotzinger, the former project scientist for Curiosity's mission, said in the statement. "The Curiosity rover discovered evidence for long-lived ancient lakes in 2014, and now 10 years later Curiosity has discovered ancient lakes that were free of ice, offering an important insight into the planet's early climate."

A paper on the discovery was published in the journal Science Advances on Jan. 15.

Now, scientists are preparing for the next step: cataloguing these samples before potentially bringing them home with NASA's Mars Sample Return program. While NASA is still weighing its options for bringing those precious bits of the Red Planet home, scientists have documented in a recent study what they know so far about the first samples of soil, regolith, and loose sediment collected by the Perseverance rover.

The researchers found that Perseverance's soil samples contain millimeter-sized grains from at least two different regions on the Red Planet that show signs of past water exposure and possible habitable conditions. Though the data looks promising, the team won't be able to confirm whether any traces of microbial life are present until the samples are back on Earth.

But it's not just the Red Planet's history that the samples will reveal, scientists say. "The samples will help us learn more about Mars, but they can also help us learn more about Earth because the surface of Mars is generally much older than the surface of Earth," said Libby Hausrath, a geochemist at the University of Nevada's College of Sciences and a member of the NASA Mars Sample Return team, in a university statement.

Earth's robotic explorers have been roaming Mars since the 1960s, uncovering clues about the planet's geology, atmosphere and history, and have provided groundbreaking insights through surface sampling and onboard analysis.

NASA's Perseverance rover, for example, is equipped with a suite of instruments including cameras, remote sensors, spectrometers and more that scientists have used to measure the chemistry and mineralogy of Martian regolith — the loose, fragmented layer of dust, soil, and broken rock covering the planet's surface.

"It's like a video game to see these images of Mars up close," said Hausrath. "You can zoom in, see the rocks and soil, pick out a spot to measure, figure out the chemistry and mineralogy of a specific rock — it's just incredible that we're able to do these things that seem like they're out of science fiction."

But there's a limit to what scientists can do, especially when it comes to drawing definitive conclusions from the data. For one, the instruments onboard Perseverance are restricted by weight, size, and power constraints, limiting their capabilities. Bringing samples back to Earth will allow for far more detailed study using more advanced lab equipment that can't make the journey to Mars.

"The Perseverance rover is able to sample loose material less than 8 mm in size from the surface to a depth of ∼4–6 cm, which is then sealed in a sample tube and either deposited on the surface of Mars or stored in the rover similarly to the rock samples for potential return to Earth by the planned Mars Sample Return campaign," they wrote.

Additionally, Perseverance's onboard scientific instruments are restricted by weight, size, and power constraints, limiting their capabilities.

"There are some instruments that just can't be miniaturized and sent to Mars," Hausrath said, "so once the samples are back on Earth, we'll have much finer resolution, be able to measure smaller amounts of each of the samples and with higher precision."

Until then, the samples will wait on Mars until they can be retrieved by a robotic lander that will hopefully arrive to collect them some time in the 2030s.

"To get the data back and be able to target a specific rock or soil area, and be able to take measurements and decipher information from a tiny sample or specks of dust on another planet is just mind blowing," concluded Hausrath.

The study of Perseverance's first rock samples was published in the journal JGR Planets.

NASA's Perseverance rover is currently exploring hills and rocky outcrops along the rim of Jezero Crater, where it has been collecting rock samples to reveal the area's geological history. This week, NASA announced that the robotic explorer picked up a "one-of-a-kind treasure" in the form of a 1.1-inch (2.9-centimeter) rock sample from an area known as "Silver Mountain."

"My 26th sample, known as 'Silver Mountain,' has textures unlike anything we've seen before," the rover's official X account posted along with a photo of the sample.

The rocks in this area are of immense scientific interest as they could offer a "rare window into Mars' deep past," NASA wrote in the statement.

The rocks in Perseverance's current area are believed to have been thrust up to the Red Planet surface from deep inside the planet after an ancient impact billions of years ago.

These rocks are believed to be pieces of the early Martian crust, and could be "among the oldest rocks found anywhere in the solar system," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrote in a statement. Studying them could help us understand what Mars and even Earth were like early in our solar system's formation.

NASA says this is the first sample from the Noachian age, a period of Mars' geological history around 4 billion years ago marked by frequent asteroid and comet impacts that shaped many of the craters will still see on the Red Planet today.

Perseverance landed on Mars in 2021 near Jezero Crater with several objectives in mind: scour the area for possible signs of ancient life, collect rock samples like "Silver Mountain" for an eventual return to Earth for study, and to test new exploration technologies.

One of those technologies was the plucky Ingenuity helicopter, a robotic flyer that was designed to make five test flights. It ended up taking to the Red Planet skies a total of 72 times before it suffered rotor damage, ending its mission.

Over the course of its four years on Mars, Perseverance has discovered rocks that show possible chemical evidence of having interacted with water at some point in their geological history. Water, at least on Earth, is essential for life.

While scientists are eager to return this and other samples to Earth so that they can be studied in-depth, the fate of the Mars Sample Return program is still unknown due to rising costs and mission complexity.

After cost projections rose to $11 billion and the sample return timeline was extended to no earlier than 2040, NASA began overhauling the plan entirely and has since sought new proposals from industry and academia. The agency will decide on a new strategy in 2026.

China, meanwhile, is aiming to launch its own Mars sample return mission in 2028, which would potentially have samples back on Earth by 2031.

Covered in more than 35,000 flowers, the 55-foot-long (17-m) float featured an Ingenuity-like rotorcraft at its front and a six-wheeled rover made to look like it had been built using components from NASA's two robots active on Mars, Curiosity and Perseverance. For example, the rover on the float is leaving behind the same wheel tracks as Curiosity — imprinting "JPL" in Morse code in the "Martian soil."

The float was also decorated with "floralgraph" mission patches, including the emblems for NASA's Viking, Pathfinder and Perseverance (Mars 2020) missions, as rendered using flowers.

The float's Mars Helicopter took flight at the control of two drone pilots who were on board (the drone was also tethered for safety precautions). Earl Cox, chief engineer for communications and system engineering at AeroViornment, helped bring the "ingenious" exhibi to life, just as the company did for the real Ingenuity.

"It's just fun to pull everything together and something we can show to everybody, [since] the Mars helicopter is a million miles away," Cox said in an interview with the local newspaper, Outlook Valley Sun. "This is a great opportunity to showcase Mars exploration."

Ingenuity on Mars flew a total of 72 times before crashing and suffering damage in January 2024, 22 months after its history-making first flight. While it was active, it went from serving as a technology demonstrator to supporting the science mission of the on-going Perseverance rover by scouting the landscape ahead from above.

The inclusion of fantastical alien visitors was inspired by this year's theme for the parade, "Best Day Ever." The float continues the story that began on La Cañada's 2017 entry, which depicted a young boy building a rocket in his backyard.

"We thought it'd be very clever to have our little intrepid astronaut make it to Mars, upon which he sees a rover and meets an alien, and they have a fun ride," Ernest Koeppen, president of the La Cañada Flintridge Tournament of Roses Association, told the Outlook Valley Sun. "Seems to me, that'd be the best day ever."

"Rover Rendevous" was also the "greenest" float in the parade, swapping out its propane-powered animation engine and hydraulics with a full EV battery controlled motor and generator.

One other float looked toward outer space to represent this year's parade theme. "Chasing Our Dreams" from Odd Fellows & Rebekahs, a sororal and service organization, featured an astronaut riding a rocket along a rainbow-colored path above Earth, past Mars and Saturn and towards the stars. Built by the Phoenix Decorating Company, the float was adorned with 59,600 flowers, including yellow and white starburst mums.

Previous years' Tournament of Roses Parades have celebrated space exploration history, including a flower-formed model of space shuttle Endeavour in 2013 and the inclusion of a space-flown rose in 2009. JPL has also represented itself in past Rose Parades, designing floats that depicted its Viking Mars lander in 1976 and the Spitzer Space Telescope with eight other spacecraft to form a giant Voltron-like robot in 2005.

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NASA's Perseverance rover has finished an epic climb on Mars.

The Perseverance rover crested the rim of the Red Planet's Jezero Crater this week, wrapping up a 3.5-month-long trek during which it gained about 1,640 vertical feet (500 meters) and tackled 20% slopes with slippery, shifting footing.

"During the Jezero Crater rim climb, our rover drivers have done an amazing job negotiating some of the toughest terrain we’ve encountered since landing," Steven Lee, deputy project manager for Perseverance at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, said in a statement on Thursday (Dec. 12).

"They developed innovative approaches to overcome these challenges — even tried driving backward to see if it would help — and the rover has come through it all like a champ," Lee added. "Perseverance is 'go' for everything the science team wants to throw at it during this next science campaign."

Related: NASA's Perseverance rover begins ambitious ascent up a Mars crater rim

Perseverance landed on the floor of the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero in February, on a mission to hunt for signs of past life on Mars and gather samples for future return to Earth.

The six-wheeled Mars rover has done this work over the course of four different science campaigns. As Lee noted, Perseverance made the rim climb to set up a new campaign — one the team is calling "Northern Rim."

"The Northern Rim campaign brings us completely new scientific riches as Perseverance roves into fundamentally new geology,” Ken Farley, project scientist for Perseverance at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said in the same statement.

"It marks our transition from rocks that partially filled Jezero Crater when it was formed by a massive impact about 3.9 billion years ago to rocks from deep down inside Mars that were thrown upward to form the crater rim after impact," he added. "These rocks represent pieces of early Martian crust and are among the oldest rocks found anywhere in the solar system. Investigating them could help us understand what Mars — and our own planet — may have looked like in the beginning."

The new science campaign will be a lengthy and involved one; in the next year, Perseverance is expected to visit up to four different geological sites and cover about 4 miles (6.4 km) of Red Planet ground, mission team members said.

Perseverance reached the top of Jezero's rim at a spot the mission team calls Lookout Hill. The rover has already left that site and is rolling toward Witch Hazel Hill, an interesting outcrop about 1,500 feet (450 m) away.

"The campaign starts off with a bang, because Witch Hazel Hill represents over 330 feet [100 m] of layered outcrop, where each layer is like a page in the book of Martian history," Candice Bedford, a Perseverance scientist from Purdue University in Indiana, said in the same statement. "As we drive down the hill, we will be going back in time, investigating the ancient environments of Mars recorded in the crater rim."

After that, the rover will head toward Lac de Charmes, which lies about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) south.

"Lac de Charmes intrigues the science team because, being located on the plains beyond the rim, it is less likely to have been significantly affected by the formation of Jezero Crater," NASA officials wrote in the same statement.

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) gave an update on the downed Ingenuity Mars helicopter on Wednesday (Dec. 11) during the 2024 Annual Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in Washington, D.C. After traveling to Mars attached to the Perseverance rover, Ingenuity began a test flight campaign to prove that powered flight in the thin Martian atmosphere was possible. After almost three years of operating on the Red Planet, Ingenuity crashed during its 72nd flight on Jan. 18, 2024, suffering rotor damage that rendered it incapable of ever flying again.

But after conducting the "first aircraft investigation on another world," Ingenuity's mission managers at JPL say the helicopter could have a second life on the Red Planet. "We are very proud to report that, even after the hard landing in flight, 72 avionics battery sensors have all been functional, and she still has one final gift for us, which is that she's now going to continue on as a weather station of sorts, recording telemetry, taking images every single sol and storing them on board," said Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity's project manager at JPL, during the team's presentation at AGU.

JPL has spent months investigating Ingenuity's crash, and determined that the helicopter's navigation systems had too little information to go with due to the monotone, bland texture of the Martian surface.

"This does not mean that we've been able to figure out everything about the flight," said Ingenuity’s first pilot, JPL's Håvard Grip, at today's presentation at AGU 2024. "Our conclusion is that we don't have enough information to disentangle some of the details about the sequence of events right around landing."

Grip added that, while the team's investigation is over, it is far from complete due to the vast distance between JPL and Ingenuity's final resting place.

"One of the things that makes it difficult to investigate this is the relative lack of information," he said. "The accident site itself is about, you know — it's more than 100 million miles [160 million kilometers] away. There's no black box, there are no eyewitnesses. We can't walk up and touch anything, so we have to work with the small pieces of information that we have."

However, JPL scientists added that, aside from its mission-ending rotor damage, Ingenuity remains in otherwise good health. In fact, if you were to ask the helicopter itself, Ingenuity would report that everything is fine, Tzanetos said.

"If you were to query Ingenuity's health system, she's green across the board as far as she's concerned. She doesn't have a sensor on the rotor system to detect the damage. But we are very proud to report that, even after the hard landing on flight 72, avionics, battery, [and] sensors have all been functional."

Tzanetos added that Ingenuity has around 20 years' worth of onboard storage remaining, meaning it can keep taking measurements and images every Martian sol (a solar day on Mars).

But there may be no way to get that data back to Earth. The Perseverance rover, through which Ingenuity communicates via radio link in order to send its data back to its mission team, is now 1.8 miles (3 km) away from the helicopter. Soon, Ingenuity might lose its ability to communicate with its human controllers on Earth.

"I think it's a good bet that, within the next month, we'll lose contact forever, or until we come back in 20 years with astronauts, or until we turn back for sample return," Tzanetos said during the presentation at AGU.

Despite its crash, Ingenuity proved to be wildly successful. The helicopter was designed to make only five flights on Mars, and ended up making 72. Because it was only a flight demonstrator, the helicopter was not designed to carry science instruments.

But JPL is already looking to the future of powered flight on Mars. During today's presentation at AGU, JPL scientists presented a video of a new Red Planet helicopter concept known as Mars Chopper.

The design is still conceptual and does not have a timeline for reaching Mars, but JPL is envisioning a six-rotor concept that is 20 times heavier than Ingenuity and could carry "several pounds of science equipment and autonomously explore remote Martian locations while traveling up to 2 miles (3 kilometers) in a day," according to a JPL statement.

The most recent stop on its Red Planet road trip? A roughly 656-foot-long (200 meters) outcrop named Pico Turquino.

But it's not all fun and games for the Mars rover. Perseverance has been studying the local regolith and nearby geological features with its Mastcam-Z and SuperCam instruments from its location near Pico Turquino. And soon, the six-wheeled robot will move on to abrasion testing at the site, scratching the surface of some of the rocks in this photo to study their composition and structure.

Through this work, the Perseverance science team hopes to unearth geologic evidence that either predates or is related to the impact that formed the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater — and potentially collect samples for NASA's planned Mars Sample Return campaign. Ultimately, Perseverance is searching for signs of possible life on Mars, and perhaps the rocks at Pico Turquino might hold some clues.

Related: NASA's Perseverance rover begins ambitious ascent up a Mars crater rim

This current quest is part of Perseverance's Crater Rim Campaign, the rover's fifth scientific effort on Mars, and what NASA officials have suggested might be "the most ambitious campaign the team has attempted so far."

The journey began in August, when Perseverance left the Neretva Vallis region to make the roughly 1,000-foot (305 m) climb to the top of Jezero's rim. And for months, the rover has delicately maneuvered up the difficult terrain of brittle crust; the rim's upper portion has a slope of about 20 degrees and is covered by slippery sand and dust.

Along the way, Perseverance has stopped to inspect exposed rocks, as it's doing at Pico Turquino. And it will continue to do so as it makes its way to the summit.

The rover's next science target is Witch Hazel Hill, but before arriving there, it'll pass through a high point at Lookout Hill. From there, the team anticipates pretty spectacular views both of Jezero Crater and the terrain beyond. Stay tuned for more photos from Perseverance!

Over the last year, Curiosity has been exploring Gediz Vallis — a channel carved into the steep slopes of Mount Sharp at the heart of Gale Crater. During this stage of its 12-year mission on Mars, the rover made some important discoveries, including accidentally unveiling crystals of pure sulfur and finding "wavey" rocks left behind by an ancient lake. Mission scientists also first noticed a large hole in one of the rover's wheels as the wandering robot traversed this region's steep slopes.

But the rover's time in Gediz Vallis is about to come to a close. On Nov. 18, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) released a final 360-degree "selfie" of the area taken by Curiosity as it prepared to head off on the next leg of its epic journey, which has already lasted a decade longer than initially expected.

Curiosity's next target is a large collection of spiderweb-like surface features, known as "the boxwork," spanning between 6 and 12 miles (10 and 20 kilometers) across. This unusual patchwork of zig-zagging rocks, or boxwork deposits, was first spotted decades ago but has never been studied up close, according to a JPL statement.

The web-like features should not be confused with the infamous "spiders on Mars" — a geological feature created when carbon dioxide ice on the planet's surface sublimates, or turns into gas from a solid. Scientists recently recreated these strange features on Earth for the first time.

Related: 32 things on Mars that look like they shouldn't be there

Boxwork deposits are also found in caves on Earth. They form when calcite-rich water fills gaps between rocks and hardens before eventually eroding away, creating "thin blades of crystalline material protruding from rocky walls" similar to stalactites and stalagmites, according to the National Speleological Society. The best examples of this on our planet are found in Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota, according to the U.S. Geological Service. However, terrestrial boxwork features are never more than a few feet wide.

Martian boxwork, which has been identified at several locations across the Red Planet, is believed to form via a similar process as terrestrial boxwork. However, instead of water dripping through caves, the sprawling mineral veins were left behind by the last remnants of ancient, mineral-rich lakes and oceans.

Researchers hope that Curiosity will learn more about exactly how this happened and what it can tell us about Mars' watery past. Mission scientists are particularly interested in the minerals that make up these web-like structures because they could shed light on whether extraterrestrial life once existed on the Red Planet.

"These ridges will include minerals that crystallized underground, where it would have been warmer, with salty liquid water flowing through," Kirsten Siebach, a Curiosity mission scientist at Rice University in Houston who has been studying the area, said in the statement. "Early Earth microbes could have survived in a similar environment. That makes this an exciting place to explore."

Curiosity will arrive at the boxwork at some point in early 2025.

The finding has fueled excitement and debate within the scientific community, as it brings us closer to answering the age-old question of whether life ever existed — or maybe still does — on the Red Planet.

However, there may be a bit of a caveat: Scientists can't be sure that the signals are 100% attributable to organic molecules. Though, for many, the possibility is likely, it’s not the only explanation, and the uncertainty comes down to the rover's instruments — they can provide strong indications and gather valuable data, but they are not as comprehensive as Earth-based laboratories.

For some background, Perseverance made the find using an advanced instrument called SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals), which is designed to hunt for organic molecules.

Related: NASA's Perseverance rover begins ambitious ascent up a Mars crater rim

"The SHERLOC instrument is our premier tool for detecting organic matter," Ken Farley, project scientist for the Perseverance rover mission, told Space.com. "It's really the only instrument that we think has a reasonable chance of finding organic matter at the concentrations that are likely present."

SHERLOC relies on two primary techniques: deep ultraviolet luminescence and Raman spectrometry. "SHERLOC's luminescence mode produces a very high signal per unit amount of certain organic molecules, but it is not especially diagnostic," said Farley.

Luminescence is the process by which a substance emits light as a result of absorbing energy — without exhibiting an increase in temperature. There are many examples of this, ranging from neon lights to fire flies. But onboard the Mars rover, SHERLOC takes advantage of this phenomenon to help identify the presence of different organic compounds.

But there is a catch: "Many, many things luminesce — there are other things that do that besides organic matter," said Farley. "It's related to subtle characteristics of the chemical composition of the materials."

This is where SHERLOC's Raman mode comes in. "It’s much less sensitive, but a much better fingerprint," Farley said. Raman spectroscopy is a technique common to most chemistry labs, where the vibrational modes of molecular bonds can be measured in order to glean information about a molecule's chemical structure.

"There are patterns of peaks in a Raman spectrum, and you can relate them to specific types of organic molecules," explained Farley. "But it's a trade off."

With both instruments, Farley believes there's a chance of detecting false positives. "You might draw the positive conclusion without recognizing that there are alternative interpretations," he explained.

Could Percy have found something else?

Perseverance was tasked with collecting and analyzing samples from Mars' Jezero Crater, chosen for its history as an ancient open-system lake approximately 3.5 billion years ago. On Earth, similar environments often show signs of ancient microbial life, making Jezero a prime target for investigating potential past life.

Using its SHERLOC instrument, the rover detected luminescence signals that initially suggested the presence of organic molecules. A paper published in the journal Nature reported these findings, indicating diverse aromatic molecules on the Martian surface that persist despite harsh conditions.

A year later, a study in Science Advances offered an alternative explanation, suggesting that the signals thought to indicate organics could instead come from inorganic materials, specifically cesium ions (Ce³⁺) in phosphate and silicate defects from ancient magma flows.

"Multiple chemicals can give rise to these same spectral features," explained Eva Scheller, a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and corresponding author of the recent study as well as a contributing author on the original Nature paper. "In spectroscopy, we call this a degeneracy, [and it's] a very common challenge when trying to interpret spectra."

Degeneracy often makes interpreting these results impossible, according to Scheller, and in less critical cases, many scientists would typically leave the data uninterpreted. However, the stakes for the Perseverance team means there will be an ongoing push to try and interpret the data despite the challenges.

"Previous studies noted that the spectra are consistent in appearance with the luminescence profile of 1- and 2-ring aromatics, this is true," said Scheller, referring to specific organic molecules made of one or two connected carbon rings. Aromatic molecules are unique because their structures include stable, ring-shaped formations with alternating single and double bonds, known as conjugated bonds. These molecules are significant because they can be found in biological compounds, such as amino acids and pigments. However, while the detection of such molecules is intriguing, it doesn't guarantee biological origin. "And it does not mean much if the data is degenerate," added Scheller.

Farley and Scheller both point out that the original paper does note this as a possibility, and does also mention the possibility of Ce³⁺ and defect inorganics as alternative explanations. "They were presented among a menu of possible interpretations," said Farley.

Though it was determined that the presence of aromatic organics would be more likely, Scheller argues that this could come down to scientists' biases and fields of expertise.

Dealing with uncertainty

On Earth, ambiguous results like these can often be clarified by using different analyses to corroborate the findings. However, conducting experiments on Mars is much more challenging.

There is limited capacity to send bulky instruments on a rover that needs to travel between planets. As a result, equipment must be miniaturized and made mobile, all while operating in an extreme and unpredictable environment. Unlike Earth, where conditions can be controlled and instruments are highly sensitive and accessible, Mars presents harsh temperatures, dust storms, radiation and limited resources. These factors complicate precise analysis and introduce uncertainties, making it difficult to draw definitive conclusions from the data.

"This is the point of the whole sample return proposal," said Scheller. This would also allow the scientists to better understand the origins of any organic molecules, should it be determined they are present in the Jezero Crater.

But both Farley and Scheller are quick to point out that even if organic molecules are present, this doesn't mean they are a potential sign of life. "I don’t think anyone on the team — even the ones strongly proposing an organic origin for the luminescence signals — would argue that luminescing 1- or 2-ring aromatic organics could be a potential sign of life," said Scheller.

"To be able to differentiate abiotic types of organic chemistries [those created through non-biological processes] from life you need really sophisticated laboratory techniques utilizing highly detailed characterization methods—and you cannot do this with a miniature spacecraft instrument adapted to extreme environments,” she added. "In [our papers], we are simply showing that we're struggling to confirm or rule out the presence of basic abiotic organic molecules using SHERLOC."

Farley emphasizes that, while the back-and-forth may seem like disagreements among scientists, it is actually a vital and inherent part of the scientific process.

"This is error correction, and it's the way the scientific process has to work," he said. "[As a scientist], one needs to be open to that possibility that they may be wrong and not fight it.

"If you accept that if you put your arguments out there and somebody finds a better interpretation and you look at it and you agree, then science corrects itself — that’s just the nature of the beast, that knowledge evolves and that’s a good thing.”

Six student teams acted as mission control for the miniature rovers; the activity was part of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Academy Robotics Workshop held at the agency’s Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in the Netherlands. The students programmed the robotic explorers, called ExoMy rovers, to autonomously search and navigate toward a target within a simulated Mars environment.

The 3D-printed ExoMy rovers were inspired by the design of ESA's Rosalind Franklin rover and equipped with six wheels, a camera and Raspberry Pi computer. One of the assignments required using the ExoMy camera to take pictures of the target blue ball on the mock Martian surface and label each photo with a specific location so that, with the help of a Machine Learning algorithm, the rover could be trained to recognize the ball on its own, according to a statement from ESA.

"The participants did not need to have previous familiarity with the topics involved; the objective was to familiarize them with the design and operation of a 3D-printed rover, inspired by ESA's Rosalind Franklin ExoMars rover," Marti Vilella Ramisa, a robotics engineer from ESA’s Automation Robotics section, said in the statement.

Related: NASA's mini moon rovers go for a test drive ahead of 2025 private lunar launch (photos)

The Rosalind Franklin rover, part of ESA's ExoMars program, is expected to launch to the Red Planet by the end of 2028 and land on the Martian surface the following year, where it will search for possible signs of past life.

A total of 30 university students with an engineering or robotics background from 14 different ESA Member States and Canada participated in the workshop, which began with a general introduction to robotics and its application to Mars exploration.

"The four-day workshop involved a mixture of lectures and tutorials then hands-on exercises to put their new-found knowledge to the test," Ramisa said in the statement. "This involved adding features and fixing bugs in the rovers’ ROS 2 Robot Operating System, mostly programmed in Python."

Before driving the ExoMy robots in the physical Mars-like environment, the students first tried out operating a rover in a computer application and learned the algorithms used to control different locomotion modes.

"The final exercise involved combining locomotion and image detection capabilities to find and drive towards the ball, allowing for the fact that the ball would be located at an unknown point," Ramisa said in the statement. "This was a challenging task, but all the teams proved successful, and some were over and above their trainers' expectations!"

In its latest findings, Perseverance took a nighttime mosaic image of the Malgosa Crest abrasion patch, at a location called the "Serpentine Rapids," using its SHERLOC WATSON camera. The image revealed white, black and, surprisingly, green-ish spots within the rock. While these rocks' composition remains a mystery, the unexpected find has scientists excited about what other hidden gems Perseverance might stumble across going forward.

To acquire images from within the rock, Perseverance made an abrasion patch in a rock outcrop named "Wallace Butte." The abrasion patch measured five centimeters (roughly two inches) in diameter, and the large green spot that can be seen in the upper left of the image is approximately two millimeters (about 0.08 inches) in diameter. The image was acquired on Aug. 19, on Martian day 1,243 of the Mars 2020 mission.

Rocks on Earth that resemble the studied red Martian rocks typically get their color from oxidized iron, the same type of iron that makes our blood red and similar to the oxidized red rust you might find on your car. The green spots that can be seen in Perseverance's new image are also common in red rocks on Earth, and are formed when liquid water seeps through sediment before hardening into rock. This process supports a chemical reaction that transforms oxidized iron to its reduced form, creating a green hue in the rock.

Related: Perseverance rover gets stunning view of big Mars crater from slippery slope

Sometimes, microbes play a role in this process on Earth, but decaying organic matter can also create the right conditions for the reduction reaction. Chemical interaction between sulfur and iron can also facilitate iron-reduction reactions without the help of microorganisms.

Exactly what type of reaction was responsible for the green spots found in Perseverance's image will remain a puzzle, however, as there was not enough room for the rover to safely place its arms holding the SHERLOC and PIXL instruments directly on top of the green spot. Thus, the robotic explorer was denied a closer look. The team hopes Perseverance unearths something similar in the future to get a better understanding of what type of chemical reactions are generating these features in the rock.

Next on the agenda for Perseverance is to ascend to the Jezero Crater rim, during which time it will have to cover steep terrain. Then it will finally leave the crater it has called home for the last two years.

NASA's Perseverance rover took a break from its Mars mountaineering expedition recently to survey its old stomping grounds.

The car-sized Perseverance landed on the floor of the 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer-wide) Jezero Crater in February 2021 to hunt for signs of past Mars life and collect dozens of samples for future return to Earth.

Perseverance has finished its work in Jezero's flats and is now scaling the crater's western rim, on its way to explore new and disparate Mars landscapes. Late last month, however, the rover paused to take in the grand Jezero view — and to share that vista with its handlers on Earth.

Mission team members stitched together 44 photos that Perseverance snapped on Sept. 27, creating a mosaic that features many of the landmarks the rover has explored.

"The image not only shows our past and present, but also shows the biggest challenge to getting where we want to be in the future," Perseverance's deputy project manager, Rick Welch of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, said in a statement on Monday (Oct. 28), when NASA shared the new imagery.

"If you look at the right side of the mosaic, you begin to get an idea what we're dealing with," he added. "Mars didn't want to make it easy for anyone to get to the top of this ridge."

Perseverance began the climb in mid-August. It took the featured photos when it was about halfway up the western rim, near a spot the mission team calls "Faraway Rock." The rover isn't expected to crest the rim until early December, however, because the going is pretty tough.

The ridge that Welch referenced has a slope of about 20 degrees, NASA officials said. It's also slippery, featuring loose sand and dust atop a brittle crust.

"Mars rovers have driven over steeper terrain, and they've driven over more slippery terrain, but this is the first time one had to handle both — and on this scale," Camden Miller of JPL, a planner, or "driver," for Perseverance's mission, said in the same statement.

"For every two steps forward Perseverance takes, we were taking at least one step back," added Miller, who also served as a driver for NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed inside Mars' Gale Crater in 2012 and is still going strong. "The rover planners saw this was trending toward a long, hard slog, so we got together to think up some options."

Those options included driving the six-wheeled Perseverance backwards, taking a switchback-heavy "cross-slope" approach, and staying close to the slope's northern edges, which may have more large, traction-enhancing rocks buried in the near subsurface.

All three of these strategies have helped to some extent, but the northern-edge method appears to provide the most bang for the buck, so the rover team is going to prioritize that one.

"That's the plan right now, but we may have to change things up the road," Miller said. "No Mars rover mission has tried to climb up a mountain this big this fast. The science team wants to get to the top of the crater rim as soon as possible because of the scientific opportunities up there. It's up to us rover planners to figure out a way to get them there."

The latest wheel photo, taken by Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on Sept. 22 shows quite a bit of damage — some of which appears to be new — from smaller dents and punctures to major tears and gashes. 

But before you panic, let us allay your fears. Curiosity's wheels have been damaged for more than a decade, and the rover is trucking along. "The image shows the MAHLI view of the right-middle (RM) wheel, which is still holding up well despite taking some of the worst abuse from Mars," Ashley Stroupe, Mission Operations Engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said in a statement.

As early as 2013, Curiosity's wheels showed signs of damage, which was not altogether surprising considering it's a one-ton machine rolling over rugged terrain, including jagged rocks. Thus, the rover's team began regular inspections of the wheels using MAHLI, keeping close tabs on the progression of wear and tear.

Related: NASA scientists solve mystery of curious 'spiders' on Mars

At one point, the team steered Curiosity away from more treacherous terrain in favor of smoother paths to prolong the lifespan of its wheels. Then, in 2017, JPL engineers uploaded new software to Curiosity that uses an algorithm to alter each wheel's speed to reduce pressure from the rocks beneath its grousers, or treads. 

While wheel damage still occurs regularly, as this new image shows, Curiosity is plodding across the tough terrain just fine, continuing its mission to search for evidence that Mars might have once been habitable for microbial life.

Plus, some good has come from Curiosity's wheel damage — NASA studied the damage extensively and used the information to inform the more durable wheel design of the Perseverance rover. And hopefully Curiosity's wheels will hold up for years to come.

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover spotted the striped rock, and the rover's initial measurements suggest it could be volcanic in origin. The rock, which has been nicknamed 'Freya Castle,' may originate from an outcropping of more of this strange material further up the slopes of Jezero.

Freya Castle looks quite unlike any rock seen on Mars before. But Perseverance could not stick around at Freya Castle to examine it for long before continuing its journey up the inner wall of the mighty Jezero crater, the interior of which the rover has been exploring since landing on Mars in February 2021.

Perseverance spotted the rock and imaged it while taking measurements with its Mastcam-Z instrument on Sept. 13, 2024 (sol 1,268 of the mission; a sol is a Martian day, which is 37 minutes longer than a day on Earth). Mastcam-Z serves as the primary "eyes" of Perseverance, providing high-resolution stereo and zoom capabilities.

Related: NASA's Perseverance Mars rover finds possible signs of ancient Red Planet life

However, MastCam-Z's multispectral observations of Freya Castle, which is just 7.9 inches (20cm) across, have already provided significant clues as to the rock's origin.

"Our knowledge of its chemical composition is limited, but early interpretations are that igneous and/or metamorphic processes could have created its stripes," wrote Athanasios Klidaras, who is a PhD student in planetary science at Purdue University, in a statement on NASA's Science website.

While a volcanic or metamorphic (wherein one type of rock is transformed into another, usually under excess temperature and/or pressure) origin may explain its stripes, it doesn't explain how Freya Castle arrived at where Perseverance found it, standing out like a sore thumb against all the other nondescript pebbles and rocks. One possibility is that it rolled down from an outcropping of similar rock higher up the slopes.

"The possibility has us excited, and we hope that as we continue to drive uphill, Perseverance will encounter an outcrop of this new rock type so that more detailed measurements can be acquired," wrote Klidaras.

Finding strange rocks on the slope of the crater's inner wall is not unexpected; mission scientists had been hoping for as much. So far they have not been disappointed. 

Besides Freya Castle, in May 2024 Perseverance came across a boulder field nicknamed Mount Washburn. Most of the rocks appeared dark, typical of many other similar rocks found on Mars, but one rock in the middle of the boulder field was different. 

Appearing bright with a speckled texture, the rock was nicknamed Atoko Point and measured 18 inches by 14 inches (45cm by 35 cm). Mastcam-Z and the rover's SuperCam, which fires a laser at a target rock to vaporize some of its outer material so spectroscopic instruments in SuperCam can analyze its composition by studying the resulting plasma from a distance, learned that Atoko Point is composed of pyroxene and feldspar. Both materials are commonly found in volcanic and metamorphic rocks on Earth. Atoko Point also probably originated elsewhere further up-slope, and mission scientists expect to find many other odd rocks that have rolled down the Martian hills, perhaps after weathering off from large outcroppings. 

The rock discoveries are coming as part of Perseverance's fourth science campaign, which is primarily dedicated to searching for evidence of carbonate and olivine deposits in what mission scientists are referring to as the 'Margin Unit' — the big geological unit that forms the inner wall of the 28-mile-wide (45km) Jezero crater. 

Carbonate rock such as limestone should have formed in Mars' ancient past when it was warmer and wetter, but so far carbonate rocks have been few and far between in our exploration of the Red Planet. Olivine is a more common mineral on Mars, and is associated with water on the surface in the past. By climbing up the crater walls, the hope is that Perseverance will chance upon outcroppings of these precious rock types that have been unearthed in the mighty impact that formed Jezero 3 to 3.7 billion years ago.

Scientists working on the mission announced last week that Perseverance is enroute to Dox Castle, a patch of Jezero Crater whose rocks may have been dumped by the asteroid impact that carved the crater out. 

Jezero Crater is a dried ancient lakebed that Perseverance has been studying since 2021, searching for signs of ancient microbial life. Searing heat from the asteroid strike that created this crater may have invigorated fluids that circulated through fractures in the area. The process would have been similar to how particle-laden fluids ooze out of hydrothermal vents rooted on seafloors here on Earth. And, importantly, signatures of any life that formed in and around those vents may still be preserved in the region's rocks, scientists think.

Dox Castle also sits between what’s known as the “Margin Unit” that lines the inside of the crater rim and the rim itself, offering scientists a rare opportunity to study ancient, asteroid-impacted rocks strewn in the transitioning region and piece together the Red Planet’s layered history. 

"Dox Castle will be our first chance to do rim science," Margaret Deahn, a Ph.D. candidate at Indiana's Purdue University who is involved with mapping the rover's ongoing journey to the crater rim, wrote in a recent news release. "With the Perseverance rover we have the potential to explore some of the oldest exposed rocks on the planet."

Related: Perseverance rover's Mars samples must be brought back to Earth, scientists stress

The rover began its months-long climb to the crater rim in mid-August as part of a bonus trek after fulfilling its original science goals. The ongoing journey is an effort to study a vastly different, and much older, region than what Perseverance has been exploring so far. The rover will also collect samples to fill its remaining 13 sample tubes — specimens that will hopefully be brought back to Earth someday if and when NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission reaches fruition. The rover has already dropped a backup of previously collected samples on the Jezero crater floor, where they await pickup by the ambitious program whose troubled architecture and budget is still being ironed out by NASA and the European Space Agency.

Perseverance is now following a route planned by its team of scientists and engineers, who were astonished there was even a viable route toward Dox Castle the rover could drive along. While its path was crafted based on orbital images, the rover is relying on its automatic navigation system to keep it safe as it maneuvers unseen hurdles on 23-degree rocky slopes and gains a total of 1,000 feet (300 meters) — its most challenging ascent yet. 

The system, named AutoNav appears to have kept the rover from drifting even as its view got increasingly hazy after a local dust storm struck late last month.

Scientists hope the Martian skies clear up soon, because they expect spectacular views of the crater floor and Jezero delta and equally insightful science when Perseverance completes its ascent.

"Our rover is in excellent condition, and the team is raring to see what's on the roof of this place," Art Thompson said in an earlier statement.

European aerospace giant Airbus has taken two of its Mars rovers out for field tests in a quarry near London, showcasing for the first time a new robotic arm for autonomous sample collection on alien planets. The company also experimented with a model of its ExoMars rover, hoping to improve its navigation system to enable the robot to travel faster and explore more terrain once it reaches the Red Planet in 2028. 

During the tests, the Mars Sample Fetch Rover demonstrator model named Codi received coordinates from a simulated ground control station to direct it to where simulated Mars samples had been stashed. The rover then used its onboard maps and an autonomous navigation system that includes a pair of stereo cameras to find its way to the samples. 

Airbus has already tested the rover twice in the same quarry in recent years, but this year's test campaign was the first to demonstrate not only travel but also sample collection. That, too, had to be done completely autonomously.

The rover moves at a leisurely speed of about 2.75 inches per second (7 centimeters per second), while also making frequent stops to evaluate the surrounding terrain with its stereo cameras and decide on the safest and most efficient route. During the tests, the rover was able to cover relatively large distances without any human intervention. "We hit a record of 300 meters [980 feet] that the rover managed to do in a day, all on its own, no interruptions," Chris Draper, Exploration Rover Program Manager at Airbus told Space.com.

The Sample Fetch Rover, in development since 2018, was intended to travel to Mars in 2026 to retrieve samples collected by NASA's Perseverance rover. In 2022, NASA scrapped the fetch rover due to budget cuts and opted to use Perseverance instead. 

The European Space Agency, however, chose to continue with the development, hoping to use the technology in a future mission, perhaps on the moon. 

"The building blocks are — being able to autonomously travers several hundred meters, locate an object, pick up the object — that's all stuff that is going to be useful for space exploration not only on Mars but also on the moon," said Draper. 

In fact, ESA is soon to start looking for a manufacturer of a planned lunar prospecting and scouting rover, which might provide just the right outlet for Airbus' work.

Exercising ExoMars

Although Codi may appear slow, the rover is much faster than its predecessor ExoMars, whose replica, named Charlie, crawled through the quarry at the snail pace of 0.4 inches (1 cm) per second.

The ExoMars rover, conceived in the early 2000s, was meant to launch to the Red Planet in 2022 after years of delays. But the project hit another obstacle in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 

In cooperation with Russia's space agency Roscosmos, the ExoMars rover was supposed to launch on Russia's Proton rocket and land with the help of a Russia-made landing platform. Russia's aggression towards its neighbor made further cooperation unacceptable. The flight model, dubbed Rosalind Franklin after the British chemist who studied the structure of DNA, now sits in a clean room in Turin, Italy, waiting for a new all-European landing module to be built. 

Although no changes will be made to the hardware during the wait, Airbus decided to find out whether the sluggish rover could move a little faster. 

"ExoMars is very good at driving over different terrain and doing it in a very safe way," Geoffray Doignon, exploration rover prototyping lead at Airbus, told Space.com. "The downside is that it is very slow. It covers about barely 100 meters [330 feet] within a Martian day."

Airbus engineers have therefore developed a new algorithm that could help Rosalind Franklin reduce the amount of time it takes to check its surroundings and calculate its route. 

"The way the ExoMars autonomous navigation works is that the rover would stop, take some images of the environment around it, build up a digital elevation map and then plan its path through that map," said Draper. "Each of those stops is actually a lot longer than the time it drives."

The new algorithm uses the rover's localization cameras at the base of its mast to monitor rocks along its path instead of stopping every few meters to evaluate the hazards. 

"With this algorithm, we change the duty cycle– the time the rover is waiting versus the time it's driving — from 30% of the time driving to 80% of the time driving," said Draper. "That means we will be able to cover more ground."

The ExoMars rover, although delayed by years, has a unique role in Mars exploration. It's fitted with a 6.6-foot (2 m) drill that will allow it to search for traces of past and present life much deeper than Perseverance can. As Mars only has a very thin atmosphere and no magnetic field, its surface is constantly battered with harsh cosmic radiation, which would likely have wiped out any living organisms. Deeper within the soil, some may have survived, experts think. 

Despite the cancellation of the fetch rover mission, Europe still has its stake in the sample retrieval operation. Italian company Leonardo is currently building the 8-foot (2.5 m Sample Transfer Arm), which will pick up the samples delivered by Perseverance and store them in the Ascent vehicle. ESA is also overseeing the construction of the Earth Return Orbiter, which will deliver the samples to Earth in early 2030s.

Using its Mast Camera, or Mastcam for short, Curiosity photographed Earth setting the Red Planet night sky while one of Mars' two moons, Phobos, rises on Sept. 5. The rover's new view, which consists of five short exposures and 12 long exposures, captures a rocky Martian outcrop in the foreground and an expansive sky with Earth and Phobos seen in the upper right. An inset in the image, which NASA shared online on Sept. 13, identifies Phobos on the left and Earth on the right. 

"It's the first time an image of the two celestial bodies have been captured together from the surface of Mars," NASA officials said in a statement releasing the new photo. "From the rover's perspective, the inset area would be about half the width of a thumb held at arm's length."

Phobos is named after the Greek god of fear and is the larger of Mars' two moons. Its smaller companion is named Deimos. 

Phobos orbits the Red Planet three times a day at a distance of only 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers) from the Martian surface, making it closer to its primary body than any other known natural satellite to a planet. 

Related: Solar eclipse on Mars! Perseverance rover sees Martian moon Phobos cross the sun in epic video

Given its close proximity, the moon is thought to be on a collision course with Mars. It's nearing the planet at a rate of six feet (1.8 meters) every hundred years, which means that it will either crash into the Red Planet in about 50 million years or break apart from Mars' gravitational influence. 

Curiosity has been exploring Mars for over a decade, having landed in Gale Crater in August 2012. The image of Earth and Phobos was taken on the 4,295th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's mission. One Martian sol is about 24 hours and 40 minutes, making it slightly longer than a single Earth day. 

The rock structure captured in the foreground of the new Curiosity view is a butte called Texoli located on lower Mount Sharp within Gale crater. Texoli is a 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain that Curiosity has been ascending since 2014 to help unravel the history of Mars. 

Kicking off a new phase of exploration, Perseverance began its trek up the western rim of this crater on Aug. 19, marking the rover's fifth science campaign, called the Crater Rim Campaign. The climb is expected to be steep and challenging, with an approximate 1,000-foot elevation gain by the time Perseverance summits the crater, which is believed to have once harbored a huge lake and a river delta.

"Given its broad scope and the wide diversity of rocks we expect to encounter and sample along the way, it may be the most ambitious campaign the team has attempted so far," NASA officials said in a statement. 

Related: Perseverance rover's Mars samples must be brought back to Earth, scientists stress

The rover's four prior campaigns — each of which provide researchers information to prepare for future Mars missions — focused on locations including the Crater Floor, Delta Front, Upper Fan and Margin Unit. The next milestone for the rover is to explore the region between the Margin Unit and the crater's rim. The rubble in this area, called Dox Castle, is believed to have been deposited by the asteroid impact that created Jezero crater almost 4 billion years ago.

What makes the rover's ascent to the crater's rim even more challenging is the lack of orbital images we have of the area. Without that information, the team won't be able to glean warnings of potential roadblocks the rover may encounter. Instead, Perseverance will have to rely on its Mastcam-Z multispectral and SuperCam long-distance imaging tools to identify different geological features in real time as it traverses the crater rim. 

"Such imaging has already proved extremely useful in the Neretva Vallis area, where at Alsap Butte we observed rocks that appeared similar to each other in initial imaging, but actually display an Andy-Warhol-esque array of color in multispectral products, indicative of varied mineral signatures," NASA officials said in the statement.

Prior to this Crater Rim Campaign, Perseverance had spent the last two months exploring the Neretva Vallis region of Jezero Crater. There, the rover came across rocks with interesting popcorn-like textures and "leopard spot" patterns. 

One of Perseverance's key goals while exploring the Red Planet is to collect samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life and stash them to be returned to Earth in a future mission referred to as Mars Sample Return. Since landing in Mars's Jezero crater in 2021, the rover has collected 25 samples of Martian rocks, loose surface material and even the planet’s atmosphere — however, Mars Sample Return has reached complications due to budget concerns. NASA is trying to find cheaper ways to go forth with the exciting plan, and we're yet to hear more on that front.

The rover is expected to encounter more sampling opportunities as it continues its trek up the crater's rim, along with light-toned outcrops, which may be similar to those observed at Bright Angel, where an ancient river flowed billions of years ago. Comparing the diverse geological features and material observed at different areas of the crater helps researchers better understand Mars' history. 

"The whole Mars 2020 science team is incredibly excited to be embarking on the next phase of Perseverance's adventure, and we expect these results, and the samples we collect along the way, to inform our understanding of not just Jezero itself, but the planet Mars as a whole," NASA officials said in the statement. "We can’t wait to share what we find!"

Within minutes and with no external help, the spacecraft must slow down from 13,000 mph (21,000 kph) to zero, ensuring that the sky crane gently lowers the rover onto the surface wheels-first, ready to conduct the science mission it was designed for. You only have one shot at the landing, during which the Red Planet's rotation will spin the rover out of view of Earth, preventing you from directly communicating with it — and learning of its success or failure — for a brief but agonizing stretch.

Sounds like one for the science fiction books, doesn't it? Yet scientists and engineers at NASA succeeded in such a daring feat 12 years ago this month, when just such an unprecedented, death-defying dive brought a new robotic resident to Mars — Curiosity — and set the stage for future missions to the Red Planet.

'Seven minutes of terror'

NASA's first three Mars rovers — Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity — landed enveloped by massive, inflated airbags that bounced more than 15 times on the Red Planet's surface before slowing to a stop. However, for the car-sized Curiosity, the math showed that existing airbags wouldn't work. And even if they did, there wasn't a known material capable of handling the rover's 1-ton weight.

Related: Curiosity rover: The ultimate guide

So the only way for Curiosity to be lowered to the surface was using a rocket-powered sky crane, which itself had to be deployed seamlessly midway during the mission's descent through the Martian atmosphere. But the mission team was not sure how to suspend a rover as large as Curiosity without it swinging dangerously. Drawing inspiration from similar sky cranes that ferry cargo helicopters on Earth, the team eventually added similar technology to Curiosity's jetpack, such that it sensed the swinging and controlled it. 

"All of that new technology gives you a fighting chance to get to the right place on the surface," Al Chen of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, who played a crucial role in the entry, descent and landing (EDL) phase for the Curiosity mission, said in a recent NASA statement.

Curiosity's complicated, nail-biting landing attempt, which left some of the mission personnel emotionally terrified, has been dubbed the "seven minutes of terror."

Although Curiosity was guided and checked upon by its team of 400 scientists and engineers throughout its eight-month space cruise, the $2.5 billion mission was pretty much on its own during the seven-minute EDL. The last command from Earth was sent two hours prior. Plus, due to the time delay between the two planets, scientists wouldn't know if Curiosity landed safely or crashed until about 15 minutes after the event occurred. 

"As far as the amount of control that the team has during entry, descent and landing, it's identical to the control that anybody watching at home has," JPL's Adam Steltzner, who was leading the EDL phase for Curiosity, told reporters shortly before Curiosity's landing attempt. "We're all along for the ride."

That ride was deemed flawless soon after the six-wheeled Curiosity touched down as planned in the 96-mile-wide (154 km) Gale Crater, and its 10 science instruments worked perfectly. Scientists and engineers who sat in mission control at JPL jumped up and down in jubilation when they received confirmation that Curiosity had landed safely.

'The right kind of crazy'

When the novel sky-crane EDL approach began taking shape in the early 2000s as the only way to land a heavy rover on Mars, it was so frighteningly daring that few scientists or engineers were sold on the idea, not the least because NASA had recently experienced some high-profile Red Planet failures.

The idea that the proposed mission would place the jetpack above the rover rather than below it, as was conventionally done, was particularly concerning to many people, recalled JPL Fellow Rob Manning, who worked on the initial concept in 2000.

"People were confused by that," he said in the NASA statement. "They assumed propulsion would always be below you, like you see in old science fiction with a rocket touching down on a planet."

But a lander's thrusters would not only stir up debris during descent, making it difficult for Curiosity to descend; they could also even dig a hole in the ground that the rover wouldn't then be able to drive out of. By placing thrusters above the rover, the mission team ensured that the wheels touched down directly on the surface, saving the extra weight of ferrying a landing platform on an already-heavy spacecraft.

"We talked about it to no end," Steltzner told Astronomy's Eric Betz. "If this didn't go right, there would be nowhere to hide, because every joe six-pack on the street would be saying that they knew it wouldn't work."

NASA's then-Administrator Mike Griffin told the mission team that the idea was crazy, "but it might be crazy enough to work. It might be the right kind of crazy."

Related: NASA: Huge Mars rover's sky crane landing was 'least crazy' idea

The novel technology turned out to be so successful that in 2021, NASA used the same skycrane method to successfully land another rover, Perseverance, which just last month had the science community — and the world — buzzing with its discovery of a Martian rock that may host signs of ancient life. 

Scientists say the same technology could be repurposed for bigger spacecraft headed not just for Mars but elsewhere in the solar system, too. "In the future, if you wanted a payload delivery service, you could easily use that architecture to lower to the surface of the moon or elsewhere, without ever touching the ground," Manning said in the NASA statement.

As for Curiosity, the rover continues roving through Mars' landscape in search of signs of ancient habitable conditions, more than 12 years after its pioneering touchdown.

NASA's Perseverance rover, which has been exploring the ancient lakebed in Jezero crater since landing there in Feb. 2021, holds 43 sample tubes in which it continues to stash Martian material of scientific interest. 

"These samples are the reason why our mission was flown," said planetary scientist David Shuster of the University of California, Berkeley, in a statement. Shuster is a member of NASA's science team for the collection and analysis of these samples.

However, while the rover's on board suite of instruments can provide a cursory analysis of the samples, the in-depth science necessary to investigate them can only be done back in a laboratory on Earth. For that to be possible, a mission has to go out to Mars, collect the samples from the rover, and bring them back. The plan was to launch that mission by the end of this decade and have those samples back on Earth by 2033. Yet, the cost of that sample-return mission, which is still in the design phase, began to  skyrocket towards $11 billion, and the time to return those samples got pushed back to around 2040. 

Related: Air sealed in Perseverance's Mars sample return tubes is as precious as the rocks themselves

So, earlier this year, NASA called a halt to those plans, and solicited ideas for new, cheaper and faster options from the private space industry. This has left the Mars science community in a bind, aware that a smaller-scale retrieval mission might not accomplish all the goals they had in mind — goals that were flagged by the National Academy of Sciences decadal survey as a top priority. Ten proposals are currently under consideration from companies such as Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

The original mission blueprints were complex — land a Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) on the Martian surface, somehow get the sample tubes from Perseverance (perhaps using air-borne rotor-craft like Ingenuity), blast off the surface in the MAV (samples in hand) and rendezvous with another spacecraft, built by the European Space Agency, in Mars orbit that will bring the samples back to Earth. Yet, no matter how daunting such a mission sounds, it's essential for planetary science to be achieved with these Mars rock subjects.

Now, a new research paper presents an initial analysis of some of the samples, conducted by the rover itself, to illustrate why exactly it is so vital that we bring the samples back to Earth. The research paper concerns itself with seven samples of sediment collected from the delta of the river that once flowed into the lake that filled Jezero 3.5 billion years ago. These samples, collected between July 7, 2022 and Nov. 29 2022, contain both fine- and coarse-grained sandstone and mudstone sediments.

"Sedimentary rocks are important because they were transported by water, deposited into a standing body of water and subsequently modified by chemistry that involved liquid water on the surface of Mars at some point in the past," said Shuster.

Coarse-grained sediments can tell us about the chemistry of the water that deposited them, because they contain both detritus and carbonate minerals that were washed from upstream.

It's the fine-grained sediments that will get most of the attention, however. That's because they are the type of sediment most likely to contain evidence of past microbial life on Mars, if it ever existed. "That's why these samples are so important," said Shuster.

The new report describes Perseverance's examination of the sampled materials. It did not detect organic materials, but Shuster isn't downhearted.

"We did not clearly observe organic compounds in these key samples," said Shuster. "But just because that instrument did not detect organic compounds does not mean that they are not in these samples. It just means they weren't at a concentration detectable by the rover instrumentation in those particular rocks."

That's why it is so important to get them back to Earth, where the most sophisticated laboratories can dissect the samples, learn their chemistry and find out what was really happening on Mars all those years ago. 

"When we bring them back to Earth, they can tell us so much about when, why and for how long Mars contained liquid water, and whether some organic, prebiotic and potentially even biological evolution may have taken place on that planet," added Tanja Bosak, who is a geobiologist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the lead author of the new study.

So far, Perseverance has collected 25 samples, including duplicates and atmospheric samples, plus three "witness" tubes that contain examples of any possible contaminants from the rover. Eight of the duplicate samples were cached at a location known as Three Forks, where they were left on the surface by the rover as a back-up should something prevent Perseverance from handing over its stash to the sample-return mission. The other samples taken so far are of igneous rock probably created when Jezero crater was excavated by the impact that formed it 4 billion years ago. 

Thus, the potential importance of the samples cannot be downplayed, as the new study team emphasizes.

"Life was doing its thing on Earth at that point in time, 3.5 billion years ago," said Ken Farley, who is the rover's project scientist at Caltech. "The basic question is, was life also doing its thing on Mars at that point in time?"

Once we get the samples back to Earth, we may finally be able to answer that question, but given the difficulties of achieving such a retrieval mission, perhaps it is best not to rush but to do the mission properly, even if it does cost more and take longer. The samples have been waiting on Mars, resting, for 3.5 billion years. They'll be able to wait a few more years until we are ready to go and get them.

The analysis of the river delta deposits was published on Aug. 14 in the American Geophysical Union's journal AGU Advances.