What NASA recently photographed on Mars - original photos

On July 15, 1965, after a 228-day flight, the space probe Mariner 4 arrived at Mars and transmitted the first images of another planet's surface to Earth. Although the resulting images astonished terrestrial scientists, the truth was that they covered only one percent of Mars's surface.

The most notable of these is NASA's perseverance rover, which arrived on the rust-covered surface of Mars on February 18, 2021, and you can learn about the images and findings that the land vehicle was able to transmit to Earth. Research on NASA

Mars 2020

As part of Nasa's Mars 2020 project, the renowned space agency not only launched the fifth Mars rover mission, but also the first helicopter mission on the red planet. In addition to the Perseverance rover, the small Ingenuity Helicopter was also set down on the surface of Mars.

The Atlas V launch vehicle, which took the equipment to its destination 300 million miles away, left the earth on July 30th, 2020. Perseverance will primarily collect martian rocks and examine the samples about geological processes, biosignatures, and the geological history of the celestial body. In addition, the climate on Mars will be examined in detail.

An artist's concept of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft approaching Mars.Credit to NASA / JPL-Caltech.

The search for traces of life is also one of the most important missions objectives to avoid contamination with terrestrial germs that could falsify a discovery. The rover was mounted in a so-called clean room.

The current mission is also in step with a progression towards a future manned Mars flight accordingly. Perseverance will also convert carbon dioxide to oxygen during its stay and analyze the results on April 20th, 2021. This endeavor was successfully put into practice for the first time.

The MOXIE instrument succeeded in producing 5.4 grams of oxygen from carbon dioxide within one hour. With this amount, an astronaut would have enough breathing air for about 10 minutes.

Jezero Crater

As previously stated, the Jezero Crater was chosen as the initial landing site. What appears to us today as a desolate dusty plain was an impressive crater lake about 4 billion years ago, with the martian waters covering a catchment area of about 9 000 square miles and the actual lake covering an area of 300 square miles.

A meteorite impact caused the 10-mile-wide Jezero Crater to form as a result of the collision.

The phyllosilicates were hurled onto the outer surface of the red planet, which is still visible today underneath the planet's surface temperatures between 200 and 400 degrees Fahrenheit. This in turn created countless clay minerals, a process that was only possible due to the existence of liquid water.

Delta Scarp

A look at the mosaic photo of the so-called delta scarp shows what a former river delta on Mars looks like in detail. Experts are convinced that the 380-foot wide scarp is a deposit of sediments that were once transported by a river into lake Jezero.

South of Seitah

The first picture shows the so-called south Seitah region of the Jezero Crater in detail. This image was taken during the 11th flight of the Ingenuity Helicopter. We can see the shadow of the equipment at the bottom of the image. Research on NASA

South of Seitah on MarsCredit to https://www.ibtimes.co.in/

Just behind the dune field is again the Perseverance Rover, visible here as a small bright dot. The land vehicle can be seen even more clearly in the second image, which zooms into the scene captured on film.

The First Borehole

Seeing this fascinating image, one might think that Perseverance had punched a huge hole in the surface of the red planet with its complex instruments. However, the close-up distorts the true dimensions of the rover's first borehole.

The hole is only a little over an inch in diameter. From the information collected, Watson, as a subsystem of the Sherloc instrument, was able to document the nature and structure of the borehole and derive conclusions about deeper areas. Research on NASA

Perseverance’s first borehole on Mars was generated using multiple images taken by the rover’s WATSON imager.Credit to NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The image, which was published on August 11, 2021, was taken during the night to keep the shadows cast within the hole to a minimum. The necessary illumination was thus provided by the white LEDs installed in Watson.

Several rock samples weighing about half an ounce will be sealed in special containers and stored in a convenient location on Mars' surface, ensuring that the collected samples will be accessible in future missions even if the rover fails.

Roubion

The borehole shown in this image has been named Roubion by the scientists responsible. This is a hole in the martian rock. The smaller depressions were again made by laser pulses from the SuperCam.

A total of 30 laser shots were needed in each case to create the depressions, which were arranged in two rows.

Raised Ridges

This photo, taken during Ingenuity's 10th flight, shows us once again the geological peculiarities of the red planet. These striking ground structures are called "raised ridges" by scientists.

What at first appears to be a collection of numerous raised structures, in reality, provides an authentic insight into the past of the red planet.

Comparable structures also exist on our earth, where we find them mainly in the proximity of deserts. The formations always indicate earlier activities of liquid water and thus also a potential for habitability in the past.

Dune Fields

Ingenuity discovered a fascinating dune field in the seitan region, but martian dunes are vastly different from their terrestrial counterparts. While dunes on Earth can move several feet in a year, the formations on Mars take hundreds of years to move.

Ingenuity in use

Although joy over ingenuity's successful flights is great in the ranks of scientists, the use of the helicopter drone serves primarily as a test run for future missions on the red planet. Ingenuity does not have any other equipment besides its cameras.

While the lower gravity on the planet makes it easier for the equipment to ascend, the thin atmosphere makes it much more difficult for the rotors to generate lift to get around this natural obstacle.

Ingenuity HelicopterCredit to NASA/JPL-Caltech

Ingenuity was outfitted with co-actually mounted rotors, which means that the rotor blades, which are arranged one above the other, rotate in opposite directions because it takes approximately 8 minutes to transmit control commands from earth to mars.

During the flight, navigation and orientation are autonomous; however, the drone receives basic control commands and a route before rising above the surface of Mars.

SuperCam

The so-called "SuperCam" is composed of four spectrometers capable of analyzing soil and rock samples using laser-induced plasma spectroscopy. This complex instrument can also be used to search for organic compounds in rocks and certain loose materials. I did research here about Ingenuity

SuperCamCredit to https://www.numerama.com/

In doing so, experts hope to discover biosignatures of microbes on the red planet. We've already presented the visible results of this work in the form of the borehole image.

The roughly nine-inch stone we see in this image was also eyed by the super cam. The laser marks are visible here in the form of small dots. Now it's up to you. Was there a photo that particularly captivated you? We're already looking forward to your comments.