Perseverance Mars Rover, NASA’s most advanced exploration vehicle to date, recently completed its 1,500th operational day of work on May 9. The rover is now parked in the Krokodillen area. It’s currently working its way over a rugged outcrop nicknamed “Copper Cove,” which may contain some of Mars’ oldest rocks from the Noachian eon. This unique region, consisting of just 73 acres, holds remarkable geological history and is sure to provide clues to Mars’ ancient habitable environment.
Perseverance has been hard at work retrieving and capping a variety of priceless samples throughout its mission. To date, it has retrieved and sealed 25 rock cores. It did not seal one core, “Bell Island,” which was overtaken on April 28. This one sample in particular has small round stones or spherules. The rover deposited three witness tubes and one atmospheric sample, adding even more scientific content to its illustrious cache. As of now, there are seven empty sample tubes left for Perseverance to fill.
The rover’s new sampling strategy permits a pivotable approach to sample taking by leaving cores from some of the holes unwedded. Acting project scientist Katie Stack Morgan from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory called this approach critical, noting that
“There are seven empty sample tubes remaining and a lot of open road in front of us, so we’re going to keep a few tubes—including the one containing the Bell Island core—unsealed for now. This strategy allows us maximum flexibility as we continue our collection of diverse and compelling rock samples.”
Perseverance’s first day at Krokodillen, May 13, 2025, was the 1,503rd sol of its mission. The rocks in this area formed before the creation of Jezero Crater, during Mars’ earliest geologic period, making them critical for understanding the planet’s history. The rover’s investigation in Krokodillen is promising to yield findings that could be as significant as those from previous explorations, such as ‘Witch Hazel Hill.’
Perseverance is more than just studying geological formations. It seeks to find clays in Krokodillen, providing evidence for the hypothesis that liquid water was widespread across Mars during earlier geological epochs. According to Ken Farley, deputy project scientist from Caltech in Pasadena, it was the possible significance of their findings that had them saying,
“If we find a potential biosignature here, it would most likely be from an entirely different and much earlier epoch of Mars evolution than the one we found last year in the crater with ‘Cheyava Falls.’”
Katie Stack Morgan highlighted the cleanliness standards maintained within the rover’s environment, minimizing any risk of contamination between samples. She remarked,
“The environment inside the rover met very strict standards for cleanliness when the rover was built. The tube is also oriented in such a way within its individual storage bin that the likelihood of extraneous material entering the tube during future activities, including sampling and drives, is very low.”
As Perseverance continues its exploration across Mars’ surface, each collected sample tells a unique and compelling story that contributes to humanity’s understanding of the Red Planet.