Perseverance has landed!

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Congratulations to NASA on a successful landing of their Mars rover, Perseverance! On Thursday, February 18, 2021 at 3:56 pm the Perseverance rover landed safely at Jezero crater on Mars, where it will begin assessing and collecting samples for a future return mission. Jezero crater was chosen as an ideal setting to search for possible signs of past life because it is an ancient lake basin with abundant ultramafic volcanic rocks, clays, and magnesium carbonates according to orbiter data. To aid in understanding Perseverance’s samples, Teanna Burnie (honours student) has been researching morphologic biosignatures in carbonate samples collected from four natural analogues on Earth including the Atlin playas. We are looking forward to the initial findings from the mission and finding out more about Perseverance’s sample collection.