The Perseverance rover: NASA's next big step in the search for life beyond Earth
Briony Horgan
Associate Professor
Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Purdue University
The Perseverance rover on the Mars 2020 mission launched on July 30 and is set for a rendezvous with Mars in February 2021. The rover will land in Jezero crater to search for signs of ancient microbial life and select samples for eventual return to Earth. In this talk I'll give an overview of what we know about the geomorphology and mineralogy of Jezero from orbital data, a preview of how we might test current hypotheses for the geological and astrobiological history of the region with the rover, and an example of the sample suite that we might expect to return.
All interested persons are invited to attend remotely—email physics@nd.edu for information.
Originally published at physics.nd.edu.