Perseverance Mars rover digs into intriguing Bright Angel rock formation

Last week, after braving a field of sand dunes and traversing the desiccated remnants of an ancient river, NASA’s Perseverance rover reached the shining rock outcropping on the Martian horizon that the rover’s operators have named Bright Angel. Perseverance has now begun its scientific investigation of a very unique place in its surroundings. Its first action: digging into the ground, scanning and imaging the Mars soil with X-rays. Over the coming months, scientists will parse the data that Perseverance sends back.

Bright Angel got its name for being an unusually light-colored patch of rock in images taken from orbit. Against the Martian landscape, the outcropping’s dramatic appearance caught scientists’ eyes. The patch’s site at the edge of Neretva Vallis, a dried river channel that feeds into Perseverance’s Jezero Crater landing site — and a channel that Perseverance had trailed for weeks — suggested that Bright Angel might harbor interesting details about Mars’ wetter past.