Acquired with the WATSON camera - Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover
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On the plains of Jezero, the secrets of Mars' past await us! Follow for the latest news, updates, pretty pics, and community discussion on NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's most ambitious mission to Mars!
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Well this is interesting! What is it?
Perseverance grinds circular patches into rocks so its science instruments can analyze the rocks' composition. The images were taken by the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera on the SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals) instrument. The camera that took these images, located at the end of Perseverance's robotic arm, was about 3 inches (7 centimeters) away from the rock surface.
Interesting, I've only ever seen the deeper boreholes!
These are done to establish if the chemistry and minerology etc are interesting enough to see if they should consider taking a rock core from this site. They have already collected 20 of the 38 samples they can take, so they only have space for 18 more samples, so they have to choose wisely. We know they will take a sample from this region, but it could be at another site, it all depends on how hard the rock is and the results of the chemistry etc