Very nice Tau

Crater Port Angeles and Perseverance's tracks on sol 395 in stereo.
Best seen on displays with extended color space, wide gamut, AdobeRGB, or similar.
Ghosting or double images in the left eye (red filter) are unavoidable on sRGB displays.
The ghosting can be reduced by attenuating the green channel of the image, but then the image takes on a distracting purple tint.

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Edit: Corrected the name of the crater

Another safe mode event??

Was the first one a safe mode? I hadn't heard anything about it. That would certainly be a reasonable explanation.

Phil

We just got several sols worth of images dumped on the server (thanks a lot Percy, I'm supposed to be working...).

Phil

Sol 397 SuperCam Remote Micro-Imager mosaic no. 1 of delta sediments

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This SuperCam image, like details seen in the Post #39 panorama, shows the downslope flow of what might be a very fine dark dust that seems to originate from the face of the sedimentary layers. For it to overlay the usually ubiquitous brighter airborne dust would seem to indicate a substantial rate of new generation of whatever this dark stuff is. It, again, is reminiscent of what on much larger scales is seen in gullies which raises, again, the question of whether dark downslope flow is purely dust, or is there some H2O involved? Otherwise, it seems like some of the darker rock is eroding at a considerable rate in the present time. Otherwise, how could these dark trails not be covered with the baseline of brighter martian dust?

Sol 397 SuperCam Remote Micro-Imager mosaic no. 2 of delta sediments

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I believe Steve Ruff mentioned that in his most recent episode on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/c/MarsGuy

Most people aren't authorized to discuss mission ops publicly because of project rules. In general, I think there would be a press release about a major outage or problem, but a minor one might well go unmentioned.

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Thank you for the image, Tau. This particular image got my inner sedimentologist very excited, I'm sure it'll be the subject of several publications. I made a quick annotated version showing my preliminary interpretations.

Essentially I interpret this conglomerate deposit as a high energy flash flood deposit during an interval when lake levels lowered. The sheer size of the clasts transported (the largest is ~1m across, based on an LPSC abstract which studied lower res images of this same outcrop) requires a powerful flood to transport them, and the high degree of rounding of the clasts suggests they were transported quite some distance. Given that the clasts appear to be several different colours and so lithologies, this agrees with the long distance idea. I suspect they were sourced from outside the crater, and so potentially have travelled many km, and could represent basement materials. The deposit itself is not sheet-like and continuous but instead appears channelised and pinches out, so perhaps the flood followed a pre-existing (dried up?) river channel. The return of delta sandstones above it might indicate a rise in lake level. There are curious discontinuous patches of bright angular 'bits' embedded with this sandstone & I'm not sure what they are, marked in pink. The presence of eroded-out rounded boulders stratigraphically higher, towards the delta top, indicates there was at least one other flash flood deposit later on, so this was not an isolated event.

Hopefully there are conglomerate deposits where the rover will be traversing when it climbs up and onto the delta in a few weeks. Because if I'm right, and these rounded clasts represent distant lithologies from the Jezero watershed, then they could be ancient (Noachian) basement rocks which would be a very high priority for sample return.

This is the sol 396 panorama in circular form.

Phil

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Sol 397 Mastcam-Z context image for SuperCam RMI mosaics no. 1 and no. 2, with four marsonauts for scale.
Thank you for your interpretation, Saturns Moon Titan.

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Thanks for your great RMI mosaics, Tau.

Here is the sol 397 panorama in circular form.

Phil

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Another drive or two and the backshell should be visible to the south

These drives, particularly the most recent one, are a total flex for the Perseverance team. I think its safe to assume, given the length of the traverses, that most of the drive is managed onboard the rover. That Sol 397-8 traverse is magnificent. They must be walking on air right now. It is a treat to watch.

Am I reading too much into this, or did Percy male a sharp turn, and stop, before that sand-filled fracture?

--Bill

I would say it made a sharp turn to avoid the trio of large rocks along the edge of the trough and stopped soon after that. The shallow trough itself is not much of a hazard in my opinion.

Here is the circular pan for sol 398.

Phil

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Sol 398 LMastcam-Z:
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Sol 397 + sol 398 Mastcam-Z long-baseline stereo image of the scarp

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There are lots of large rounded rocks right at the base that they might be able to have direct access to.

an unimaginable variety of rocks!

The sol 399 circular panorama. There's another of those linear trough things.

Phil

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And another on sol 400.

Phil

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What do you think Phil - first sign of the top of the backshell and parachute?

Possibly... but I'm not ready to bet my pension on it. Not all of it anyway.

Phil

Sol 400 Navcam panoramic.

Here is my version of Sol 395 pan in 3D.
(I'm over buried with work and late in my processing)
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Nice pan Ant103 Thanks a lot !

Spotted by HiRISE:

https://www.uahirise.org/ESP_073068_1985

Sol 401 circular panorama. This was a shorter drive, 170 m or so.

Phil

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Yeah - that's the backshell and chute for sure.

Backshell and parachute imaged with Mastcam-Z on sol 401.

Thanks a lot Thomas for this nice picture
I hope that the view will improve over the next days and that we will gather pics that will be as nice as the ones taken from the Zhurong Chinese rover (taken with the MastCam-zoom if we are not nearing it as close as the Chinese did to their parachute) and thus, enable NASA/JPL to make a spectacular Press release (as the Chinese did also).
Here is its version in 3D. Enjoy
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Sol 402 Mastcam-Z delta panorama with enhanced colors

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Great work ! Thank you Tau

Sol 402 Navcam panoramic. The delta hills are growing so much that the top part is out of frame

Thanks Tau for the colourful panorama. I've located the different scarps visible in that image. There are two conglomerate outcrops visible, one much more extensive and coarser grained than the other, although they might be lateral equivalents of the same conglomerate bed. The 'three forks' area the rover will be driving up is still out of view, once we swing round that subdued scarp at the far left of the panorama it'll be in view for the first time. At the current driving rate, we could be there by this time next week!

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Sol 402 circular panorama. We came about 200 m WSW on this drive.

Phil

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Panorama taken with Mastcam-Z Left on sol 402 and three subsets.

Sol 403 Mastcam-Z images with the impact site of the descent stage (skycrane)
Some bright or metallic reflections can be seen in the center of the enhanced-color image and to the right in the anaglyph

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Sol 403 Mastcam-Z images (enhanced colors, anaglyph) with parachute and backshell

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Edit: Another drive on Sol 404, but the images were only acquired on the morning of sol 405

Roughly processed post-drive (4-tile) NavCam's, assembled in MS-ICE from the available images.
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Sol 405 she turned around!! Looks like she might approach the base of the delta

They don't make it easy for us! This is the sol 405 morning panorama in circular form - at the sol 404 location.

Phil

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Really great, but...
Sorry to say that "ordinary" people here tell us that those Mars rocks always look the same and they feel quite bored.
This is a real concern not to be avoided.
=>> We need to give them inspiring pictures : today, they feel more concerned by the emergencies of war and the constraints of daily life
And we have not to forget that they are also taxpayers (even in France for experiments paid on the Perseverance rover).
Before going to the base of the delta, we are many people involved in fostering space exploration (not only at TPS but also in space-related organizations in France) thinking that it should be nice to take the opportunity of being close to the parachute and its backshell (a mere 2-day driving away) to go there first and take some quick & spectacular pictures of them

I would avoid driving near the parachute.
We learned not long ago that even in the thin Martian atmosphere, a sudden dust storm can throw sand onto the rover deck.
Movement of the parachute during a storm or by a dust devil is quite possible. I would not want the rover to get tangled in a parachute.
Better, the rover avoids unnecessary risks and provides spectacular images of Martian landscapes and rocks.

A Phobos transit in the Gemini constellation on sol 397 caused a partial sun occultation (timeline and animated gif).
Some sunspots are visible.
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Edit: Typo in the time format corrected

If they do indeed decide to drive towards the base of the delta, then checking out the geological contact between the lake sediments and the Maaz formation (lava flow) might be the reason why. Perhaps they think they've spotted an outcrop that shows this, or they think they'll be able to see the contact using RIMFAX (the ground-penetrating radar). Investigating this contact would be important because hopefully they'd be determine whether the lava flow postdates the lake or pre-dates the lake, which means when we do radiometric dating on those igneous rock cores upon return to Earth we'll know whether we're getting a minimum or maximum age for the delta.

Alternatively, perhaps they just decided to turn on the spot for some reason. Guess we'll see soon.

I was not speaking of rolling on Perseverance's parachute, but get close enough to make a nice picture, like the Chinese did.
And the local scenery with its background mountains, would make such pictures truly spectacular
Spectacular enough to make world press publications (nobody noticed the Chinese picture release, save from space enthusiasts).
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Nobody would notice Perseverance doing it either, apart from space enthusiasts. Tianwen-1 was blessed with a very traversable terrain and a strategic route that went straight past their backshell anyway. It essentially cost them nothing to do it.

M2020’s backshell is not so fortunate. It landed in some rough terrain - round trip to get from here to the far side of it, safely, and back again, is probably two weeks of effort. That doesn’t seem a sensible thing to do with ~$30M worth of prime mission. It would likely gain as much “Why are we littering Mars” coverage as “Wow -let’s pay for more space” coverage. I have already seen the ‘littering’ comment repeatedly after the few Mastcam shots.

This mission, like Curiosity, has shown it is totally open to doing cool stuff purely for EPO (selfies, etc) but an expedition to go get a back shell postcard I think would constitute a pretty irresponsible way to spend prime mission time.