Sols 4486-4487: Ankle-Breaking Kind of Terrain!

Written by Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, Planetary Geologist at University of New Brunswick

Earth planning date: Wednesday, March 19, 2025 

This terrain is a tricky drive, with rocks angled chaotically all around. One of our geologists remarked that they wouldn’t like to even walk over this without solid boots coming way up over the ankles — this is definitely the kind of terrain to result in twisted and broken ankles! So it wasn’t too unexpected that the drive we had planned on Monday cut short after 18 meters (about 59 feet). Fortunately, we ended up both at a workspace with abundant bedrock and in an orientation that allowed us to pass SRAP (our “Slip Risk Assessment Process”).  

The rover planners were quickly able to find a spot to brush, so we have a coordinated target on “Palm Grove,” one of the laminated rocks in the lower half of the accompanying image. APXS and MAHLI will look at this target on the first sol of the plan, and then ChemCam LIBS and Mastcam will look at it on the second sol. Although the bulk of the bedrock is relatively nodule free, ChemCam will look at the nodular target “Refugio” to compare to the more dominant, nodule-poor bedrock. 

On Monday, our workspace included some very interesting layers in the bedrock that might represent preserved sand ripples, but sadly, as Conor reported on Monday, we didn’t pass SRAP, which precluded any contact science. However, today we ended up near rocks that had similar layer geometry, and will acquire a MAHLI “Dog’s Eye” or mosaic image of these rocks at “Duna Vista” and two Mastcam 5×3 mosaics (“Bayside Trail” and “Oso Flaco”) on other examples.  

Mastcam is taking several other images here. A 14×3 mosaic will capture the “nearfield” or area close to the rover, and a set of four further images focus on four distinct trough features, to help us better understand ongoing modification of the surface. Further afield, the “Quartz Hill” and “Pino Alto” mosaics look at areas of fragmented bedrock which may be similar to the “Humber Park” outcrop we analyzed this past weekend. Even further from the rover, ChemCam will acquire RMI (Remote Micro Imager) images of the “Boxworks” and an almost circular depression (“Torote Bowl”) whose origin is not clear. 

The environmental theme group (ENV) planned a Mastcam tau (to look at dust in the atmosphere) and a Navcam dust-devil survey (to look for dust devils!) for the first sol of the plan. On the second sol, we fill out the movies with Navcam movies looking toward the south of the crater (suprahorizon, cloud shadow, and zenith movies) and a Mastcam sky survey.  

In between the movies on the second sol, our drive is planned to take us another 34 meters (about 112 feet)… but we will have to see how far our intrepid rover will make it on this tricky terrain. Slow and steady will win this race!

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Shocking Spherules!

Written by Alex Jones, Ph.D. candidate at Imperial College London

Last week the Perseverance Science Team were astonished by a strange rock comprised of hundreds of millimeter-sized spheres… and the team are now working hard to understand their origin. 

It has now been two weeks since Perseverance arrived at Broom Point, situated at the lower slopes of the Witch Hazel Hill area, on the Jezero crater rim. Here, a series of light- and dark- toned bands were visible from orbit, and just last week the rover successfully abraded and sampled one of the light-toned beds. It was from this sampling workspace where Perseverance spied a very strange texture in a nearby rock… 

The rock, named “St. Pauls Bay” by the team, appeared to be comprised of hundreds of millimeter-sized, dark gray spheres. Some of these occurred as more elongate, elliptical shapes, while others possessed angular edges, perhaps representing broken spherule fragments. Some spheres even possessed tiny pinholes! What quirk of geology could produce these strange shapes? 

This isn’t the first time strange spheres have been spotted on Mars. In 2004, the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity spotted so-called, “Martian Blueberries” at Meridiani Planum, and since then, the Curiosity rover has observed spherules in the rocks of Yellowknife Bay at Gale crater. Just a few months ago, Perseverance itself also spied popcorn-like textures in sedimentary rocks exposed in the Jezero crater inlet channel, Neretva Vallis. In each of these cases, the spherules were interpreted as concretions, features that formed by interaction with groundwater circulating through pore spaces in the rock. Not all spherules form this way, however. They also form on Earth by rapid cooling of molten rock droplets formed in a volcanic eruption, for instance, or by the condensation of rock vaporized by a meteorite impact.  

Each of these formation mechanisms would have vastly different implications for the evolution of these rocks, so the team is working hard to determine their context and origin. St. Pauls Bay, however, was float rock — a term used by geologists to describe something that is not in-place. The team are now working to link the spherule-rich texture observed at St. Pauls Bay to the wider stratigraphy at Witch Hazel Hill, and initial observations have provided tantalizing indications that it could be linked to one of the dark-toned layers identified by the team from orbit. Placing these features in geologic context will be critical for understanding their origin, and determining their significance for the geological history of the Jezero crater rim and beyond! 

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CAS Discovery and Foresight

Convergent Aeronautics Solutions (CAS) Discovery identifies problems worth solving for the benefit of all.

We formulate “convergent” problems—across multiple disciplines and sectors—and build footholds toward potentially transformative opportunities in aeronautics. As aeronautics rapidly advances, it is increasingly intersecting with other sectors like energy, healthcare, emergency response, economic resilience, the space economy, and more.

CAS Discovery builds new innovation tools and methods, a workforce adept at innovation methods, and transdisciplinary teams of researchers within and beyond NASA that conduct regular “Discovery sprints”—expeditions into cross-sector topic areas that could beneficially transform aeronautics and humanity.

WHAT is Discovery?

Participatory

It is difficult to understand and effectively address stakeholders’ needs & capabilities without engaging them. Discovery, in consultation with key NASA offices and other government agencies, has honed mechanisms to lawfully and respectfully engage and invite participation from stakeholders, communities, industry, NGOs and government to collaboratively formulate complex societal challenges tied to aviation. 

Convergent

Typical organizational structures limit convergence across knowledge boundaries. CAS Discovery is intentionally cross-sector and transdisciplinary because the most impactful ideas often lie at the intersection of boundaries, the borderlands where multiple disciplines and communities come together. We work to emerge multi-sector, system-of-systems challenges that integrate political, economic, social, technological, environmental, legal and ethical trends, needs, and capabilities.

Future-Focused

Organizations have a tendency of being driven by short-term thinking and relatively short time horizons. CAS Discovery uses strategic foresight methods to examine 20 to 50-year time horizons, systematically ingesting and synthesizing signals and trends from aero and non-aero sources to envision a variety of scenarios to uncover opportunities for the future of aeronautics.

Ecosystemic

We study the ecosystems that are part of aeronautics and aerospace. This helps in broadening consideration of impacts while practicing foresight. It enhances our awareness of the environment and gives stakeholders the ability to see ripple effects across technologies, economies, communities, etc. We seek to benefit the wellness of the entire ecosystem while also benefiting the constituents.

WHO is Discovery?

NASA Researchers

They are the engine that propels CAS Discovery. Our cross-center Discovery sprint and foresight teams are composed of researchers from NASA’s Ames Research Center and Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, and Langley Research Center in Virginia.

Researchers from Outside of NASA

They collaborate with us as subject matter experts or Discovery sprint team members to contribute their backgrounds in fields less common within NASA, such as energy, economics, anthropology, and other areas. This collaboration happens through many mechanisms, such as freelancing, crowdsourcing, interviews, webinars, and podcasts.

Stakeholders

They are engaged in various ways and to different degrees, often co-envisioning potential futures, co-formulating problems, and co-designing solutions.

Innovation Architects

They are the glue that holds CAS Discovery together and the anti-glue that keeps our teams from getting stuck. They come from a wide range of experience, each bringing deep expertise in leading transdisciplinary teams and stakeholders through processes and methods from strategic foresight, complex systems design, human-centered design, and more.

CAS Center Integration Leads (CILs)

They work with NASA line management at each Aeronautics center to bring NASA researchers and potential new PIs into CAS. CILs also host annual Wicked Wild idea pitch events to bring new problem areas and solution ideas into CAS Discovery and early Execution phases.

• Ames Research Center CIL: Ty Huang
• Armstrong Flight Research Center CIL: Matt Kearns 
• Glenn Research Center CIL: Jeffrey Chin
• Langley Research Center CIL: Devin Pugh-Thomas

CAS Discovery Leads

They oversee Discovery sprint and strategic foresight teams, topics, and processes; new tools and continuous improvement experiments; and the overall health of the CAS innovation front-end pipeline and related strategic outputs.

• Discovery Lead: Eric Reynolds Brubaker, Langley Research Center
• Foresight Lead: Vikram Shyam, Glenn Research Center

Sample Discovery Publications

COMING SOON: Links to Technical Memorandums and conference papers.

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Jim Banke

NASA to Launch Three Rockets from Alaska in Single Aurora Experiment

Three NASA-funded rockets are set to launch from Poker Flat Research Range in Fairbanks, Alaska, in an experiment that seeks to reveal how auroral substorms affect the behavior and composition of Earth’s far upper atmosphere. 

The experiment’s outcome could upend a long-held theory about the aurora’s interaction with the thermosphere. It may also improve space weather forecasting, critical as the world becomes increasingly reliant on satellite-based devices such as GPS units in everyday life.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Geophysical Institute owns Poker Flat, located 20 miles north of Fairbanks, and operates it under a contract with NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, which is part of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The experiment, titled Auroral Waves Excited by Substorm Onset Magnetic Events, or AWESOME, features one four-stage rocket and two two-stage rockets all launching in an approximately three-hour period.

Colorful vapor tracers from the largest of the three rockets should be visible across much of northern Alaska. The launch window is March 24 through April 6.

The mission, led by Mark Conde, a space physics professor at UAF, involves about a dozen UAF graduate student researchers at several ground monitoring sites in Alaska at Utqiagvik, Kaktovik, Toolik Lake, Eagle, and Venetie, as well as Poker Flat.  NASA delivers, assembles, tests, and launches the rockets.

“Our experiment asks the question, when the aurora goes berserk and dumps a bunch of heat in the atmosphere, how much of that heat is spent transporting the air upward in a continuous convective plume and how much of that heat results in not only vertical but also horizontal oscillations in the atmosphere?” Conde said.

Confirming which process is dominant will reveal the breadth of the mixing and the related changes in the thin air’s characteristics.

“Change in composition of the atmosphere has consequences,” Conde said. “And we need to know the extent of those consequences.”

Most of the thermosphere, which reaches from about 50 to 350 miles above the surface, is what scientists call “convectively stable.” That means minimal vertical motion of air, because the warmer air is already at the top, due to absorption of solar radiation.

When auroral substorms inject energy and momentum into the middle and lower thermosphere (roughly 60 to 125 miles up), it upsets that stability. That leads to one prevailing theory — that the substorms’ heat is what causes the vertical-motion churn of the thermosphere.

Conde believes instead that acoustic-buoyancy waves are the dominant mixing force and that vertical convection has a much lesser role. Because acoustic-buoyancy waves travel vertically and horizontally from where the aurora hits, the aurora-caused atmospheric changes could be occurring over a much broader area than currently believed.

Better prediction of impacts from those changes is the AWESOME mission’s practical goal.

“I believe our experiment will lead to a simpler and more accurate method of space weather prediction,” Conde said.

Two two-stage, 42-foot Terrier-Improved Malemute rockets are planned to respectively launch about 15 minutes and an hour after an auroral substorm begins. A four-stage, 70-foot Black Brant XII rocket is planned to launch about five minutes after the second rocket. 

The first two rockets will release tracers at altitudes of 50 and 110 miles to detect wind movement and wave oscillations. The third rocket will release tracers at five altitudes from 68 to 155 miles.
Pink, blue, and white vapor traces should be visible from the third rocket for 10 to 20 minutes. Launches must occur in the dawn hours, with sunlight hitting the upper altitudes to activate the vapor tracers from the first rocket but darkness at the surface so ground cameras can photograph the tracers’ response to air movement.

By Rod Boyce
University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute 

NASA Media Contact: Sarah Frazier 

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