Perseverance on Verge of Driving Record as Spirit Data Reveals Widespread Water on Ancient Mars

NASA's Perseverance rover is set to break the off-world driving distance record, while reanalyzed data from the Spirit rover suggests ancient Mars had more water than previously thought.

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NASA's Perseverance rover is about to make history on Mars. Within the next week, it is expected to surpass the 45.16 kilometers (28.06 miles) driven by its predecessor Opportunity, which went silent in 2018. The rover, which landed in Jezero Crater in February 2021, has been exploring some of the most ancient rocks in the Solar System, dating back about 4 billion years.

A key factor in Perseverance's success is its autonomous navigation system. Project manager Steven Lee highlighted that the rover's auto navigation is the enabling technology. About 90% of the distance Perseverance has covered was driven autonomously, thanks to its Vision Compute Element. In contrast, Curiosity, which landed earlier and has an older computer, only drives autonomously about 10% of the time. Curiosity has traveled 38.6 kilometers in its decade and a half on Mars.

The rover's wheels have been redesigned, showing no signs of appreciable wear, unlike Curiosity's. Initially life-tested for 20 kilometers, NASA is now certifying the wheel actuators to at least 100 kilometers. Perseverance operates on RTG power and carries no propellants, consumables, or lubricants, simplifying its operations.

Vivian Sun, deputy project scientist, emphasized the importance of driving: "It is very enabling for the science. Not to sell the rover’s other advanced capabilities short, but the driving in particular has allowed us to have a larger scope than previous missions." She added, "It’s the first time we’ve been able to investigate this terrain in situ, and that’s been very exciting."

In a separate development, reanalysis of data from NASA's Spirit rover, which explored Gusev Crater, has revealed evidence of widespread water on ancient Mars. Paolo de Souza of Edith Cowan University analyzed Mössbauer spectrometer data and found hematite and altered magnetite in Martian soil. Hematite is an iron oxide that forms in the presence of liquid water and in volcanic regions, while magnetite on Mars indicates water-rock interaction.

De Souza's team detected hematite traces excavated from 32 undisturbed soil sites. Finding crystalline hematite in ordinary Martian soil was unexpected. De Souza said, "One of the most important discoveries was finding crystalline hematite in ordinary Martian soil. This mineral’s widespread presence suggests not only that water was present, but that significant areas of Mars may have once been covered by water."

The presence of hematite interacting with water can form small spherical nodules known as 'blueberries', an example of which was imaged by the Opportunity rover in a 5-cm rock sample. These water-related minerals extend across vast areas of Mars, likely formed over millions of years from wind erosion, temperature changes, and storms.

This analysis represents the most detailed iron-mineral profile of Martian soil to date. De Souza noted, "Many measurements were not detailed enough on their own to identify minerals present in very small quantities. By bringing the data together and analyzing it in a new way, we were able to reveal information that had been hidden for years." The paper was published on 26 June in the journal Interactions. De Souza plans to conduct a similar analysis of Opportunity rover data from Meridiani Planum.