NASA’s Perseverance rover has embarked on an ambitious road trip on Mars

Perseverance is likely to encounter some of the steepest and most challenging terrain it has experienced so far, according to NASA. The journey involves an elevation gain of around 1,000 feet and will most likely wrap up at the end of the year.

Throughout its travels, Perseverance will study Mars’ terrain, comparing rocks on the crater rim with those on its floor and in previously explored areas. The comparisons should give scientists a richer understanding of Mars’ landscape and its geological history.

Once the rover reaches the top, it is expected to focus on two regions: a spot nicknamed “Pico Turquino” and another dubbed “Witch Hazel Hill.”

Photos snapped from orbit suggest that Pico Turquino has some ancient fractures that may be remnants of hydrothermal systems from Mars’ distant past, according to NASA. Scientists are eager to investigate the possibility that heated water circulated beneath the Martian surface long ago; if that was the case, it could indicate that conditions were once ripe for microbial life to exist on the planet.

At Witch Hazel Hill, NASA scientists plan for Perseverance to investigate layers of bedrock that are likely to contain clues about the planet’s climate over billions of years.

Eleni Ravanis, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa and one of the science leads of the Crater Rim Campaign, said the findings will help researchers understand more about Mars’ geological evolution.

“This is because we expect to investigate rocks from the most ancient crust of Mars,” Ravanis said in a statement. “These rocks formed from a wealth of different processes, and some represent potentially habitable ancient environments that have never been examined up close before.”

Perseverance launched on July 30, 2020, and landed on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021. The mission is the first step in what is known as the Mars Sample Return campaign, a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency. The plan calls for subsequent missions to send another spacecraft to Mars to collect the samples Perseverance has gathered and bring them back to Earth.