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

Abstract

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.

Petrological Traverse of the Olivine Cumulate Séítah Formation at Jezero Crater, Mars: A Perspective From SuperCam Onboard Perseverance

“…Two pairs of samples have been collected in Séítah: the Salette and Coulette cores at the Brac outcrop, and the Robine and Malay cores at the Issole outcrop. One of each pair has been deposited in the contingency cache at the base of the delta, and the second will be deposited in the final cache later in the mission (Simon et al., 2023; Sun et al., 2023). These samples would obviously be critical to tackle some of the scientific questions discussed in this article using the higher spatial resolution and analytical precision of laboratory instruments on Earth.…”

“…Here, we review the SuperCam data obtained for the Séítah formation and discuss them in light of existing literature, including recent work and articles by the Mars2020 team. In the future, and given the mission objectives (Farley et al, 2021;Sun et al, 2023), Perseverance will likely not visit the Séítah formation again, yet it will The top cross-section is located in Figure 1. Olivine Fo#, bulk rock Mg#, and Al/Si molar ratio (Table 1) are represented for each target (circles) and average value for the group with standard deviation (squares).…”

Diverse Lava Flow Morphologies in the Stratigraphy of the Jezero Crater Floor

“…Numbers along borders of mosaics are azimuth and elevation coordinates (in relation to rover position when images were obtained). (d) Stratigraphic profile and members of the Séítah and Máaz formations (based on B. Horgan et al., 2023; Crumpler et al., 2023; Sun et al., 2023).…”

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

“…The results presented in this paper suggest that this statement is robust at global scale, that is to say looking at the statistics of craters larger than 170 m. At this scale, there is no obliteration of craters over the entire unit as their size distribution is following the isochron slopes (Figure 2). However, the in situ investigation of the dark floor unit (Alwmark et al., 2023; B. Horgan et al., 2022; Sun et al., 2022) revealed that the Máaz formation is layered and comprised of five different members, with different properties that could influence erosion and crater retention. The primary spatial extension of these sub‐units is not known even if some margin of potential lava flow may have been identified (Alwmark et al., 2023; B. Horgan et al., 2022).…”

“…The part of the floor unit closer to the delta is therefore the most promising location for sampling. The floor unit sample locations, as part of the crater floor campaign (Sun et al., 2022), are not exactly at the base of the delta but are in the part of the floor unit that was most recently exhumed according to Figure 3.…”