Tag Archives: Jezero Crater

Explosive volcanism likely made olivine-rich deposit near 2020 rover landing site

Ashfall from ancient volcanic explosions is the likely source of a strange mineral deposit near the landing site for NASA’s next Mars rover, a new study finds. The research, published in the journal Geology, could help scientists assemble a timeline … Continue reading

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Send your name to Mars with NASA’s 2020 rover

Although it will be years before the first humans set foot on Mars, NASA is giving the public an opportunity to send their names – etched on microchips – to the Red Planet with NASA’s Mars 2020 rover, which represents … Continue reading

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Hunting for biosignatures in volcanic rocks

[Editor’s note: From a paper by Magnus Ivarsson, Therese Sallstedt, and Diana-Thean Carlsson recently published in Frontiers in Earth Science.] Morphological Biosignatures in Volcanic Rocks – Applications for Life Detection on Mars The exploration of Mars is largely based on comparisons with … Continue reading

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Mars 2020 can now phone home

Mars 2020 engineers and technicians prepare the high-gain antenna for installation on the rover’s equipment deck. The antenna is articulated so it can point itself directly at Earth to uplink or downlink data. The image was taken on April 19, … Continue reading

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Mars 2020: Things are stacking up for the spacecraft

For the past few months, the clean room floor in High Bay 1 at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has been covered in parts, components and test equipment for the Mars 2020 spacecraft, scheduled for launch toward the … Continue reading

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2020 rover has landed in Jezero Crater again and again

In a little more than seven minutes in the early afternoon of Feb. 18, 2021, NASA’s Mars 2020 rover will execute about 27,000 actions and calculations as it speeds through the hazardous transition from the edge of space to Mars’ … Continue reading

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Winds of Jezero Crater

[Editor’s note: From a paper by Mackenzie Day and Taylor Dorn recently published in Geophysical Research Letters.] Wind in Jezero crater, Mars • Modern winds in Jezero crater come from the east, but ancient winds came from the southwest • … Continue reading

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Defining the goals for collecting Mars samples

Returning samples from the surface of Mars has been a high-priority goal of the international Mars exploration community for many years. Although randomly collected samples would be potentially interesting, they would not be sufficient to answer the big questions that … Continue reading

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Seeing Mars with 2020 vision: Jezero Crater and Oxia Planum

Both NASA and ESA hope their next Mars rovers will find evidence that life once thrived on Mars, but they have different strategies to reach this goal. Their landing site choices reflect this difference. Engineers are assembling two ambitious rover … Continue reading

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JPL: Mars 2020 build update

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