Sols 4402-4415: Rover Decks and Sequence Calls for the Holidays
By Abigail Fraeman, NASA’s Mars Exploration Program
December 30, 2024
As the holiday season approaches on Earth, NASA’s Perseverance rover team is hard at work preparing for a quiet period of operations on Mars. The rover will spend Sols 4402-4415 (December 25, 2024 – January 7, 2025) in a “deck and sequence” mode, meaning that the rover will be powered down and will only wake up periodically to perform essential tasks such as checking its health and recharging its batteries.
During this time, the rover team will take a break from sending commands to Perseverance and will use the opportunity to analyze data and plan for future activities. The rover will continue to collect data from its instruments, but the data will not be transmitted back to Earth until after the deck and sequence period is over.
Perseverance has been exploring Jezero Crater since February 18, 2021, and has made significant progress in its mission to search for signs of ancient life on Mars. The rover has collected over 100 samples of Martian rock and soil, which will be returned to Earth for further analysis. Perseverance has also discovered several intriguing geological features, including a river delta and a lakebed, which provide evidence for a wetter and more habitable Mars in the past.
The deck and sequence period will give the rover team a chance to catch up on data analysis and to plan for the next phase of the mission. Perseverance is expected to begin its next science campaign in January 2025, which will focus on exploring the Jezero crater floor and searching for more signs of ancient life.
The rover team is confident that Perseverance will continue to make important discoveries in the coming years. The rover is a powerful tool for exploring Mars and is helping us to learn more about the planet’s past and present.
Sols 4402-4415: Rover Decks and Sequence Calls for the Holidays
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