NASA announced it will host a live press conference on Wednesday, 10 September, at 6:00 p.m. Cyprus time (GMT +3) to present a NASA Mars discovery based on the analysis of a key rock sample collected by the Perseverance rover in the summer of 2024.
The sample, named Sapphire Canyon, was gathered in July last year from rocky formations at the edge of Neretva Vallis, an ancient river channel that once carried water into Jezero Crater. Initial findings are the subject of a new scientific publication.
The briefing will be streamed live on nasa.gov/live.
Participants include:
- Sean Duffy, Acting Administrator of NASA
- Nicky Fox, Deputy Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate
- Lindsay Hays, Senior Scientist for Mars Exploration
- Katie Stack Morgan, Lead Scientist for the Perseverance programme at JPL
- Joel Hurowitz, Planetary Scientist at Stony Brook University, New York
Journalists wishing to ask questions by phone must register at least two hours before the start of the event.
The work of Perseverance
Since landing in Jezero Crater in February 2021, the rover has collected 30 rock samples and still has six empty tubes for future collections. It also uses specialised instruments to study geological formations it does not sample directly.
Perseverance is additionally equipped with a weather station to monitor environmental conditions for future crewed missions, as well as materials used in space suits, allowing NASA to assess their durability in the Martian environment.
The Perseverance programme is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), as part of the agency’s wider Mars exploration portfolio.
The NASA Mars discovery announcement is expected to shed new light on the Red Planet’s geological past and future mission planning.
Also read: ON THIS DAY: Nasa’s spacecraft Viking 2 landed on Mars (1976)
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