Samples Collected From the Floor of Jezero Crater With the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover

Simon, Justin I.; Hickman‐Lewis, K.; Cohen, B. A.; Mayhew, L. E.; Shuster, David L.; Debaille, V.; Hausrath, Elisabeth M.; Weiss, B. P.; Bosak, Tanja; Zorzano, María Paz; Amundsen, H. E. F.; Bell, J. F.; Benison, Kathleen C.; Berger, E. L.; Beyssac, Olivier; Brown, A. J.; Calef, F.; Casademont, Titus M.; Clark, B. C.; Clavé, Elise; Crumpler, L. S.; Czaja, Andrew D.; Fairén, Alberto González; Farley, K. A.; Flannery, David; Fornaro, Teresa; Forni, O.; Gómez, Felipe; Goreva, Y. S.; Gorin, Andrew L.; Hand, K. P.; Hamran, Svein Erik; Henneke, Jesper; Herd, Christopher D. K.; Horgan, B.; Johnson, J. R.; Joseph, J.; Kronyak, R. E.; Madariaga, Juan Manuel; Maki, Justin N.; Mandon, Lucia; McCubbin, F. M.; McLennan, Scott M.; Moeller, R.; Newman, Claire; Núñez, Jorge; Pascuzzo, A. C.; Pedersen, David Arge Klevang; Poggiali, Giovanni; Pinet, P.; Quantin‐Nataf, C.; Rice, M.; Rice, J. W.; Royer, Clément; Schmidt, M. E.; Sephton, Mark A.; Sharma, Sunanda; Siljeström, Sandra; Morgan, Kathryn Stack; Steele, A.; Sun, V. Z.; Udry, Arya; VanBommel, S. J.; Wiens, Roger C.; Williams, Amy J.; Williford, Kenneth H.

doi:10.1029/2022je007474

Cited by 50 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 171 publications

(350 reference statements)

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“…The crater density is in N/km 2 . The pink stars denote the two locations of the 4 collected samples of the floor unit by Perseverance (Simon et al., 2023). (b) Map of the craters >170 m of both the main delta fan and the dark floor unit with a color code as a function of their size.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…During the first ∼380 sols of the mission, the dark crater floor unit, referred to as the Máaz formation by the Mars 2020 team (Farley et al, 2022), has been investigated using the payload on the Perseverance rover. Four samples have been collected from this unit: Montagnac and Montdenier from the Rochette member of the Artuby ridge, a widespread caprock layer within Máaz, and Hahonih and Atsah from the upper crater-retaining top of Maaz (Simon et al, 2023). The results of Perseverance's crater floor scientific campaign (Sun et al, 2022) show that the dark floor unit is composed of holocrystalline igneous rocks dominated by pyroxene and plagioclase with limited aqueous alteration (Farley et al, 2022;Mandon et al, 2022;Udry et al, 2022;Wiens et al, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Complex Exhumation History of Jezero Crater Floor Unit and Its Implication for Mars Sample Return

et al. 2023

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During the first year of NASA's Mars 2020 mission, Perseverance rover has investigated the dark crater floor unit of Jezero crater and four samples of this unit have been collected. The focus of this paper is to assess the potential of these samples to calibrate the crater‐based Martian chronology. We first review the previous estimation of crater‐based model age of this unit. Then, we investigate the impact crater density distribution across the floor unit. It reveals that the crater density is heterogeneous from areas which have been exposed to the bombardment during the last 3 Ga to areas very recently exposed to bombardment. It suggests a complex history of exposure to impact cratering. We also display evidence of several remnants of deposits on the top of the dark floor unit across Jezero below which the dark floor unit may have been buried. We propose the following scenario of burying/exhumation: the dark floor unit would have been initially buried below a unit that was a few tens of meters thick. This unit then gradually eroded away due to Aeolian processes from the northeast to the west, resulting in uneven exposure to impact bombardment over 3 Ga. A cratering model reproducing this scenario confirms the feasibility of this hypothesis. Due to the complexity of its exposure history, the Jezero dark crater floor unit will require additional detailed analysis to understand how the Mars 2020 mission samples of the crater floor can be used to inform the Martian cratering chronology.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Complex Exhumation History of Jezero Crater Floor Unit and Its Implication for Mars Sample Return

et al. 2023

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“…Science observations would be made and analyzed quickly to establish the database of Séítah formation compositions and facies and to determine which Séítah outcrops to sample. Early images of Séítah showed apparent layering (Figure 3g), which raised the possibility that Séítah could potentially be a sedimentary deposit with fine‐grained rocks that would be of high sampling interest (Section 3.3.2; Farley et al., 2020; Simon et al., 2023). If a sedimentary fine‐grained Séítah rock could not be found or sampled, the team would instead sample a representative rock from Séítah that is olivine‐rich and potentially carbonate‐bearing, as this could be correlated to the major olivine‐bearing unit inside and potentially outside Jezero and would likely be the best indication of past water activity and thus habitability so far observed (Section 2.2.1).…”

Section: Crater Floor Campaign Objectives and Notional Planmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Purple coatings (purple arrows in Figure 17d) were once again observed on the natural surface of the rock, and even though the Brac rock appears layered, no evidence of layering was observed in the Dourbes abrasion patch. The first Séítah sample, Salette, was then collected on sol 262 and its sample pair, Coulettes, was acquired on sol 271 (Simon et al., 2023).…”

Section: Crater Floor Campaign Narrativementioning

confidence: 99%

“…From sols 165-168, the team investigated reasons for the "missing" core and took extensive imaging around the rover and in the workspace to see if the core may have fallen out of the tube. No missing core was found, and eventually it was determined that the most likely scenario was that the Roubion target was too low strength and disintegrated during the act of coring (Farley et al, 2022;Simon et al, 2023).…”

Section: First Sampling Attempt At Roubionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Overview and Results From the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover's First Science Campaign on the Jezero Crater Floor

et al. 2023

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The Mars 2020 Perseverance rover landed in Jezero crater on 18 February 2021. After a 100‐sol period of commissioning and the Ingenuity Helicopter technology demonstration, Perseverance began its first science campaign to explore the enigmatic Jezero crater floor, whose igneous or sedimentary origins have been much debated in the scientific community. This paper describes the campaign plan developed to explore the crater floor's Máaz and Séítah formations and summarizes the results of the campaign between sols 100–379. By the end of the campaign, Perseverance had traversed more than 5 km, created seven abrasion patches, and sealed nine samples and a witness tube. Analysis of remote and proximity science observations show that the Máaz and Séítah formations are igneous in origin and composed of five and two geologic members, respectively. The Séítah formation represents the olivine‐rich cumulate formed from differentiation of a slowly cooling melt or magma body, and the Máaz formation likely represents a separate series of lava flows emplaced after Séítah. The Máaz and Séítah rocks also preserve evidence of multiple episodes of aqueous alteration in secondary minerals like carbonate, Fe/Mg phyllosilicates, sulfates, and perchlorate, and surficial coatings. Post‐emplacement processes tilted the rocks near the Máaz‐Séítah contact and substantial erosion modified the crater floor rocks to their present‐day expressions. Results from this crater floor campaign, including those obtained upon return of the collected samples, will help to build the geologic history of events that occurred in Jezero crater and provide time constraints on the formation of the Jezero delta.

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A review of infrared and Raman spectroscopy in the geosciences

King,

Mernagh

2025

Treatise on Geochemistry

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Samples Collected From the Floor of Jezero Crater With the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover

Cited by 50 publications

References 171 publications

The Complex Exhumation History of Jezero Crater Floor Unit and Its Implication for Mars Sample Return

The Complex Exhumation History of Jezero Crater Floor Unit and Its Implication for Mars Sample Return

Overview and Results From the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover's First Science Campaign on the Jezero Crater Floor

A review of infrared and Raman spectroscopy in the geosciences

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