NASA rover snaps photo of its most daunting challenge yet

A car-sized NASA rover, weighing over a ton, will scale a crater wall.

The space agency announced that its robotic Perseverance mission, now looking for hints of past life on Mars, is embarking on the next phase of Martian exploration. But first, it must climb out of the Jezero Crater, a region that once held a gushing river and expansive lake. It won't be easy.

The journey will "include some of the steepest and most challenging terrain the rover has encountered to date," NASA said in a statement.

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The rover captured a view of the ascent ahead. It will encounter 23-degree slopes as it rumbles up 1,000 feet of elevation. There are no roads on Mars, so the path easiest traveled will inevitably mean traversing rock-strewn or steep areas.

The robot will traverse a route between the two hills shown below.

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The Perseverance rover will ascend the crater wall ahead, gaining 1,000 feet of elevation.Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU / MSSS

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Mission scientists are eager to reach the summit of Jezero Crater. Water once poured through this region, and hydrothermal activity — processes that create hot groundwater and steam — may have created fissures in the ground long ago.

"These rocks formed from a wealth of different processes, and some represent potentially habitable ancient environments that have never been examined up close before," Eleni Ravanis, a member of the Perseverance rover team, also said in an agency statement.

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NASA is interested in exploring Martian places that once hosted habitable environs — temperate enough to harbor liquid water — because the regions may have preserved evidence of past microbial life. This could mean telltale molecules or features formed by biological processes.

Already, the rover has recently spotted "chemical signatures and structures that could possibly have been formed by life billions of years ago," the space agency said — though proving this will mean bringing the samples back to Earth.

In the coming months, expect the robot to beam back the success and travails of its looming, and daunting, Martian ascent.