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NASA's Mars Exploration Program (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Sol 0690: Searching for Buried Treasure on Mars With RIMFAX
The panorama is made up of 121 individual Mastcam-Z images stitched together. The images were taken on Sol 690 (January 27, 2023).
What do the Perseverance rover and Superman have in common? They both can “see” through solid rock! Superman has X-ray vision whereas Perseverance has RIMFAX, a ground penetrating radar or GPR, located on the lower rear of the rover. RIMFAX uses radio waves to image the subsurface rock layers as the rover drives along. It is the first instrument of its kind sent by NASA to Mars and can “see” down to 10 meters (33 feet) depth. As the rover drives along, RIMFAX sends out a radio signal into the surface. When the radio waves encounter a new rock layer, some waves bounce back up toward RIMFAX. RIMFAX detects these return signals and stacks them up, building an image of the subsurface rock layers. The speed the waves travel through rock depends on the rock’s properties, summarized by a quantity called permittivity. Different rock types have known permittivity values; therefore, scientists can constrain the rock type of each layer. The tilt of the layers also indicates the conditions they were deposited in.
Figuring out the order different layers of rocks were deposited in allows scientists to tease out the climate history of the area and could tell us if liquid water once existed there and for how long. The first results returned by RIMFAX from the crater floor show that GPR works great on Mars, even compared to most places on Earth! This is because it's so cold on Mars that there's no liquid water below the surface, which limits the penetration of radar waves on Earth. The results showed that the rock layers have a high permittivity value, corresponding to igneous rocks, whereas the tilt of the rock layers indicate they could have been deposited by a long period of volcanic activity or when the crater was covered with liquid water. Determining which of these processes formed the subsurface layers can be aided by collecting more data as Perserverance drives along, and by observations from the other instruments on the rover. Since leaving the crater floor, RIMFAX has also detected sedimentary rocks as well as igneous. This information will provide useful context for scientists back on Earth when they analyze the rover’s samples.
Elisha Jhoti
Other panoramas of Mars by Perseverance rover:
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The planet Earth has proven to be too limiting for our awesome community of panorama photographers. We're getting an increasing number of submissions that depict locations either not on Earth (like Mars, the Moon, and Outer Space in general) or do not realistically represent a geographic location on Earth (either because they have too many special effects or are computer generated) and hence don't strictly qualify for our Panoramic World project.But many of these panoramas are extremely beautiful or popular of both.So, in order to accommodate our esteemed photographers and the huge audience that they attract to 360Cities with their panoramas, we've created a new section (we call it an "area") called "Out of this World" for panoramas like these.Don't let the fact that these panoramas are being placed at the Earth's South Pole fool you - we had to put them somewhere in order not to interfere with our Panoramic World.Welcome aboard on a journey "Out of this World".
