Perseverance Views 'Pico Turquino Hills'

Figure B, Click here for animation (mp4, 384 MB)

NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover used its Mastcam-Z camera system to capture this panorama of a location nicknamed "Pico Turquino Hills" on Oct. 22, 2024, the 1,306th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. This area is located on the rim of Jezero Crater. Perseverance landed on the crater's floor on Feb. 18, 2021, and has been steadily working its way up and out of the crater since August 2024.

The rocks in Pico Turquino Hills are among the oldest yet found by Perseverance, forming in a different geologic era than almost everything the rover has seen before. They're likely part of the original surface that existed before Jezero Crater's formation by a massive asteroid about 3.9 billion years ago.

The rocks here are mostly made up of volcanic minerals like olivine, plagioclase, and pyroxene. In the far-right corner of the panorama is a field of white cobbles. This represents the first time Perseverance has encountered pure quartz rock, which may have been created by a hydrothermal system like hot springs – an environment life could have survived in, if any existed on the Red Planet billions of years ago.

Figure A shows a close-up of the white quartz cobbles.

Figure B is an animation panning over the panorama.

Arizona State University leads the operations of the Mastcam-Z instrument, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, on the design, fabrication, testing, and operation of the cameras, and in collaboration with the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen on the design, fabrication, and testing of the calibration targets.

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

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

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

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

For more about Perseverance: science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/