this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover
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On the plains of Jezero, the secrets of Mars' past await us! Follow for the latest news, updates, pretty pics, and community discussion on NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's most ambitious mission to Mars!
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If I'm lining up my features right, it would appear they went SW or WSW, at least for part of the drive, not veering very far from the heading they initially took downrim.
I wondered if they would stick around at the last site and sniff what look to be more spherules a bit longer. They even took some night-time imagery of the things, and they don't break out the LED that often, aside from the abrasion patches. From what little I know of impactite materials over on Luna, you'd really want to return more of these to Earth. I am really not sure we captured too many in Sample 29. They have some funky stories to tell, no doubt completely different from the ones that impact beads on Earth and Luna would tell you.
Excellent call regarding drive direction! According to the post-drive image metadata that reports the x,y z of the rover from the last zero reset of the RMC site number. That data tells us the distances between the rover's end-of-drive location and its beginning-of-drive location was 147.24 meters west, and 51.4 meters south. So that looks very close to WSW.
We'll get a precise Lat / Long etc when the traverse map or Waypoints JSON is released. Sadly that won't be released until the JPL staff report for work in the next few hours and have checked / approved the data before releasing it :)
I was hoping they'd give those spherules a dose if LIBS, but I've not really looked at all the pre-drive images yet. I also hope that the next time they equip a rover to explore other worlds they have a modified collection strategy that besides coring, they include the ability to collect samples from the surface (small pebbles etc) so we're sure to get things like those spherules :)
Edited to correct a typo and add the z -28.14 meters (change in elevation)