A fascinating look at exploration of Jezero Crater is now available for your viewing pleasure.

Who is in that martian attire?

It is “Mars Guy,” none other than Arizona State University associate research professor Dr. Steve Ruff. He’s a Mars geologist with decades of experience exploring the Red Planet. 

“I’ve launched a new project oriented toward public engagement that takes advantage of my expertise and experience,” Ruff tells Inside Outer Space.

Novel in-person experience

The fresh set of videos follows the exploration of Jezero crater by the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter, presenting science, engineering, and the search for life on Mars using a novel in-person experience.

These unique videos are being developed in part with collaboration from the NASA Infiniscope project.

Two newly posted videos are “Mars Guy meets the Mars helicopter” and “Mars helicopter first flight play-by-play.”

They are available at:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTSWebmSKFeq9iGuT_Kl-SA

One Response to ““Mars Guy” Explores Jezero Crater”

  • Since it is now Sol 59 I thought I would share some of my observations on the Perseverance mission. If you look at the images from the rover “Look Down Camera” as it descends to the Martian surface you can see how the Sky crane retro rockets have blasted away surface soil and sands exposing a number of rocks underneath with enigmatic holes or vesicles in them. The rover itself then landed right on top of these exhumed rocks and on Sol 3 took a number of detailed images with the Mastcam-Z Camera’s.

    My concern is that there were no analyses done on these rocks before the rover started its trek across the Jezero landscape. I asked the rover team about this and their reply was that they were sure these holey rocks would be encountered at other locations in the mission ahead. So far, since Sol 3 that has not been true, all the rocks on the rovers trek appear to be sand blasted ventifacts and appear completely different from rocks on Sol 3. My question at this point is – What if all the rocks with the holes/vesicles in them can only be accessed if they can be somehow dug up from under an unknown depth of soil? Would NASA’s assumption that they will find more of them laying on the surface in the journey ahead then be considered a missed astrobiology opportunity?

    As an astrobiologist who made a 2003 scientific study of the holes/vesicles in rocks from the Viking 2 Landing site in Utopia Planitia and made a comparison of them to 450 million year old marine Ordovician sandstones with biogenic dissolution cavities in them; is that the rocks Perseverance landed on top of could be crucial evidence whether similar type of life existed on Mars billions of years ago. Since Perseverance is touted as an astrobiology mission why not use every possible opportunity to examine whatever evidence they come across?

    NASA’s ho hum attitude of not examining the rocks the sky crane exposed and Perseverance landed on with Sol 3 is the same kind of situation that occurred with the Curiosity rover finding cylindrical tubes and burrow-like features on the rock named Haroldswick on Sol 1903-23. Here again, even though these features were imaged by Curiosity’s MAHLI camera, no geochemical or mineralogical analyses were obtained on the tubular or cylindrical objects (the first of their kind ever encountered on Mars) before NASA had the rover drive off to a new location. I was told by members of the Curiosity team that if they found more of the “objects” they would examine them in more detail. I wrote about this incident in my 2020 eBook DISCOVERY ON VERA RUBIN RIDGE: TRACE FOSSILS ON MARS? (Amazon.com)

    If this is the way NASA is going to run a mission that is supposed to be dedicated to astrobiology, then hopefully, the Chinese Tianwen-1 rover in May might try and solve the mystery of the “holey rocks”. If I am correct in my interpretation of the numerous holes/vesicles in the Viking lander 2 Mars rocks as being a biosignature from a former lake or ocean, then perhaps the Chinese will make a more serious attempt to look at this possibility and in doing may also take the credit for the discovery. How ironic that would be.

    Sincerely,

    Barry E. DiGregorio

    https://spie.org/Publications/Proceedings/Paper/10.1117/12.457566?SSO=1

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