The escarpment the science team refers to as “Scarp a” is seen in this image captured by Perseverance rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument on April 17, 2021. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS Pictures from NASA’s latest six-wheeler on the Red Planet suggest the area’s history experienced significant flooding events. A new paper from the science team of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover details how the hydrological cycle of the now-dry lake at Jezero Crater is more complicated and intriguing than originally thought. The findings are based on detailed imaging the rover provided of long, steep slopes called escarpments, or scarps in the delta, which formed from sediment accumulating at the mouth of an ancient river that long ago fed the crater’s lake. The images reveal that billions of years ago, when Mars had an atmosphere thick enough to support water flowing across its surface, Jezero’s fan-shaped river delta experienced late-stage flooding events that carried rocks and debris into it from the hi...

Geared toward improving spacecraft navigation, the technology demonstration operated far longer than planned and broke the stability record for atomic clocks in space. For more than two years, NASA’s Deep Space Atomic Clock has been pushing the timekeeping frontiers in space. On September 18, 2021, its mission came to a successful end. The instrument is hosted on General Atomics’ Orbital Test Bed spacecraft that was launched aboard the Department of Defense Space Test Program 2 mission June 25, 2019. Its goal: to test the feasibility of using an onboard atomic clock to improve spacecraft navigation in deep space.  The Deep Space Atomic Clock is about 10 inches (25 centimeters) on each side, roughly the size of a toaster. Its compact design was a key requirement, and an even smaller iteration will fly aboard NASA’s VERITAS spacecraft. Currently, spacecraft rely on ground-based atomic clocks. To measure a spacecraft’s trajectory as it travels beyond the Moon, navigators use these tim...