You mean "notional path to the SSW", Paul, no?

Oy. Less than 5 vertical m cleared after a whole week of short slippy drives. I'm not sure what I was expecting to find on this rim, but this terrain wasn't it.

EDITED TO ADD: I meant - only 5 m on this drive, after a whole week of slippy drives, with less than 10 vertical m cleared on any one drive. And this is hardly the softest-looking crater rim we've seen on Mars...

I've seen dust storms before - the largest ones, the global ones, even through backyard telescopes. If you're working right on the surface, they're not fun.

I'm not often surprised anymore by whitish or light-toned materials near a rover since Spirit uncovered all that whitish silica with its dragging dead front wheel, all those years ago. It seems we often find that Mars is red only until you literally scratch the surface.

I have to say that Percy often drives right past plenty of rocks I'd like to investigate more. I know that Ken Farley et al. are doing just that with remote sensing (the results of which we aren't privy to for quite a while), so they have some idea of what they're looking at, but I'm often tantalized by a lot of this stuff.

For God's sake, stop it with the conspiracy theories. Trace Gas Orbiter would absolutely not miss the, well, methane emission, from a single baby cow, let alone an adult specimen worthy of being prepared as wagyu. Everyone knows that a Japanese master chef would quit (or worse...) before disgracing himself thus. He would never abandon a thickly-marbled specimen on a great big windy crater rim like this.

This is Mars. If you want your vulgar gyudon, there's plenty of that on the mad blue planet next door. Martian wagyu should be part of the finest sukiyaki, to be eaten in formal dress, in deeply contemplative silence.

... I should add - if you can get a sample of this rock for us, we'll even let you eat part of it. It might be a bit salty, but you can be pretty sure Martian beef is nitrate-free...

The idea that this "zebra" or "bad camo" rock could be metamorphic is really something, an interpretation I didn't even seriously consider. If this is metamorphic, one would think at first glance that it isn't more of the same material we've sorta-detected on Mars already, which is probably the hydrothermal or shock metamorphic kind. Mars Guy considered metamorphic rock in his last video only to discard it...

Then again, the Nili plateau region just beyond the crater rim is supposed to be so damned old, even for Mars, that it could preserve evidence for all kinds of craziness, and I'm not sure we can rule out that this rock isn't impact ejecta from the plateau. Maybe this thing doesn't preserve evidence for something as Earth-like as plate tectonics, but that banding pattern needs a deeper look. It may not be a match for the neatly-striped metamorphic rock of Earth, but Martian metamorphism that may have occurred deep within the crust is something we shouldn't ignore. At the very least, I'd like Mars Guy's comparison of this rock to freaking dolomite to be put to the test. There's more evidence for plate tectonics on Mars than there is for that stuff!😅

How like you people to constantly reference your tired, dirty terrestrial examples, your lousy "Earth analogues". Anyone that's been paying attention knows that Martians craft things like the ultimate artisans they are, applying the most gentle and skillful touch, tentacles perfectly co-ordinated. Humans go on and on about the "Inca City" and the "Face on Mars", but Martians work every crevice of every worthy rock.

If Earth had a real space program, or just real science, you'd see them dancing on every dust mote, and you might even catch them making lewd gestures when Perseverance fries yet another rock to "analyze" it, but you're too intent on your carbonates and silicates and phosphates...

Nuclear-powered. Ridiculous.

And all the low-lying terrain in this image was under water...

I am fascinated by Mars as it is. Even so, this amazing image really forces me to stop, and stare, and imagine this scene, imagine Mars, as it was. It's artfully framed, yes, but I'm still stunned to visualize how those old, low, rounded-down ridges in the background would look entirely different if they were encompassing open water. Every time you think you're starting to understand Mars...

The thermal cycling hypothesis for erosion has been advanced for Mars since the 1960s - before we had landed even a single mission on the surface - but personally, I'm not convinced. The effect should be ubiquitous and would apply to every clast/rock a rover can see, but just about any landscape shot shows that there are plenty of rocks without the network of cracks you'd expect. Paul Hammond is correct in pointing out that rocks preferentially fracture along planes of weakness (the direction/face where a mineral is naturally weakest), and the composition of the rocks should have a lot to do with it, but I still think that the process would be a lot further along after billions of years.

The potholes you see (...feel) in places with sub-zero winters show us exactly how good freezing/thawing water is at breaking and flaking hard surfaces, so Mars Guy isn't wrong to point that out first in the video.

I don't want to be pedantic here in saying this: Mars experiences dust storms, rather than sand storms. That is a significant difference, because dust is light enough to stay aloft for much longer than sand, which has noticeable effects on climate. Today's Martian atmosphere cannot loft sand very far. Keep in mind that sand storms would be much more effective at eroding rocks like the one Percy is investigating now - and doing damage to things like rovers and solar panels.

Imagery from today (sol 1084) shows that visibility is not great - parts of the Jezero rim are hazy or invisible - but it's far from the worst we've seen on the planet (I'm thinking of what Opportunity saw in the great storm of '07). I would actually expect Ingenuity to survive this.

Potato-shaped!??!? I'd like to see Mars Guy's figure after a few billion years...

Please. Some respect here for these two well-accreted ellipsoids with a few extra tera-tons. If you people want to swipe left on something, you can go straight to the Belt with all those charisma-free rubble piles and old boulder-faces. Sure, they've got the organic matter and the metals, but we'll see who you come running back to when you remember who's been lighting up every romantic Martian evening for all these eons...

Perseverance is deep within the ongoing Margin Unit campaign, where orbital signatures of carbonate minerals appear strongest.

Perseverance is approaching a small, ~50-m-wide impact crater that has created a natural cross-section of rock layers of the Margin unit, potentially providing new views of deeper bedrock. The team is eagerly awaiting images of the interior of this small crater, which could reveal information about the emplacement of the upper Margin Unit.

Based on orbital satellite images, rock layers near the Jezero Crater Rim are thought to be among the oldest rocks that could be explored by a rover on Mars. Therefore, the light-toned rock layers pictured here could represent much older strata than has yet been explored by Perseverance – possibly dating back to the Noachian (approximately 3.7 – 4.1 billion years ago). Exploration of these terrains could provide unprecedented insight into the climate and environmental habitability during earlier and possibly wetter periods in Mars’ history.