2 min read

Looking Out for ‘Lookout Hill’

A fisheye color image of the Martian surface shows a desert-like landscape in pale orange, with a pair of rover wheel tracks starting at the bottom of the frame and extending far into the distance, converging and disappearing into the hazy horizon near the top of the image. Parts of the Perseverance rover – and the shadows they cast on the ground – are visible at the bottom corners of the frame, including the wheel that made the right-hand set of tracks.

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover looked backward to capture this image of its tracks over monotonous terrain, using its Rear Right Hazard Avoidance Camera. Pico Turquino, a bedrock mesa on the Jezero crater rim, is just visible in the background. Perseverance acquired this image on Nov. 29, 2024 (Sol 1343, or Martian day 1,343 of the Mars 2020 mission), at the local mean solar time of 11:58:52.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

At Pico Turquino, a bedrock mesa on the Jezero crater rim, the science and engineering teams planned proximity science on Percy’s 30th abrasion patch, Rio Chiquito. SCAM and ZCAM characterized the rock near the abrasion, while SHERLOC and PIXL instruments were deployed for proximity science. The data from Rio Chiquito will help characterize the Pico Turquino area in addition to helping scientists understand the broader story and complex geologic history of Jezero crater.

A color overhead close-up view of a spot on the Martian surface, hard, flat ground that’s off-white and very light tan. At the center of the image is a perfect circle scraped into the ground, at a very shallow depth. Mounded around the circle is the soil and gravel dug out from this spot. The slightly larger mound at the top is pointed toward the top of the frame; the mound on the bottom is smaller and more rounded, and both taper off at the sides of the hole. Combined, the abraded circle and the mounds above and below resemble a pupil-free human eye carved on an ancient stone statue.

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover captured this image of the Rio Chiquito abrasion patch, using its SHERLOC WATSON camera, located on the turret at the end of the rover's robotic arm. Image acquired on Nov. 20, 2024 (Sol 1334, or Martian day 1,334 of the Mars 2020 mission) at the local mean solar time of 16:18:39.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

After reaching the 30th abrasion milestone, Percy — along with the rover team back on Earth — took a couple of sols of much-deserved break over the Thanksgiving holiday before getting back to work.

Percy has since left Pico Turquino and has started moving to the next geologically significant stop, called Witch Hazel Hill. There is also a planned stop along the way near the highest point of the crater rim that the rover will traverse, a locale aptly named “Lookout Hill” where we will get outstanding views of both the interior of Jezero crater and the surrounding landscape, as if in a lookout tower. The path to get to these stops is mostly covered in regolith (soil) and lacks interesting rock outcrops, so the team’s focus over the next few weeks is on making and monitoring drive progress. As the rover drives, however, it will still have science cameras trained on interesting rock outcrops in the far distant hills to gather additional clues about the rocks that make up the Jezero crater rim.

Personally, I can’t wait for our stop at Lookout Hill, the apex of the crater rim, to see some gorgeous views inside and outside of Jezero from one of the highest spots around! Along with analyzing other returned data while Percy progresses toward Witch Hazel Hill, we’ll be anxiously scanning our post-drive images to look out for Lookout Hill coming into view

Written by Eleanor Moreland, Ph.D. student collaborator at Rice University