NASA Perseverance Rover Reaches Top of Jezero Crater Rim

The road ahead will be even more scientifically intriguing, and probably somewhat easier-going, now that the six-wheeler has completed its long
climb to the top.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has crested the top of Jezero Crater’s rim at a location the science team calls “Lookout Hill” and rolling
toward its first science stop after the months long climb. The rover made the ascent in order to explore a region of Mars unlike anywhere it has
investigated before.

Taking about 3½ months and ascending 1,640 vertical feet (500 vertical meters), the rover climbed 20% grades, making stops along the way for
science observations. Perseverance’s science team shared some of their work and future plans at a media briefing held Thursday, Dec. 12, in
Washington at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting, the country’s largest gathering of Earth and space scientists.
“During the Jezero Crater rim climb, our rover drivers have done an amazing job negotiating some of the toughest terrain we’ve encountered
since landing,” said Steven Lee, deputy project manager for Perseverance at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

“They developed innovative approaches to overcome these challenges — even tried driving backward to see if it would help — and the rover
has come through it all like a champ. Perseverance is ‘go’ for everything the science team wants to throw at it during this next science campaign.”

A scan across a panorama captured by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover shows the steepness of the terrain leading to the rim of Jezero Crater.
The rover’s Mastcam-Z camera system took the above image that make up this view on December 5.
Since landing at Jezero in February 2021, Perseverance has completed four science campaigns: the “Crater Floor,” “Fan Front,” “Upper Fan,” and “
Margin Unit.” The science team is calling Perseverance’s fifth campaign the “Northern Rim” because its route covers the northern part of the
southwestern section of Jezero’s rim. Over the first year of the Northern Rim campaign, the rover is expected to visit as many as four sites of
geologic interest, take several samples, and drive about 4 miles (6.4 kilometers).

“The Northern Rim campaign brings us completely new scientific riches as Perseverance roves into fundamentally new geology,” said Ken Farley,
project scientist for Perseverance at Caltech in Pasadena. “It marks our transition from rocks that partially filled Jezero Crater when it was
formed by a massive impact about 3.9 billion years ago to rocks from deep down inside Mars that were thrown upward to form the crater rim after impact.”