NASA Mars Perseverance Rover Captures A Rock's "Balancing Act"

NASA Mars Perseverance Rover Captures A Rock's "Balancing Act"

Can you spot the small Mars rock sitting atop a larger one in this raw unprocessed image?

This is another interesting curiosity on the surface of Mars in Jezero Crater.

Image Date: Sol 459: Left Mastcam-Z Camera, imaged at 10:09:11.660 (local mean solar time)

Perseverance Rover Update:

Perseverance has continued into Hawksbill Gap, making remote sensing observations of small portions of outcropping rock layers in search of a good place to collect a sample. Since Perseverance is in the Shenandoah quadrangle, we are using target names from Shenandoah National Park. Some of the names this past week included “Bald_Face_Mountain,” “Little_Devil_Stairs,” “Sunset_Hill,” “Luck_Hollow,” and “Moody_Creek.” Perseverance logged nearly 400 meters of driving progress for the week of May 15-21, accumulating a total distance since landing of over 11.8 km as of Sol 446.

Caption Credit: Eleni Ravanis, Student Collaborator at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Release Date: June 2, 2022

Mission Name: Mars 2020

Rover Name: Perseverance

Main Job: Seek signs of ancient life and collect samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and soil) for possible return to Earth.

Launch: July 30, 2020    

Landing: Feb. 18, 2021, Jezero Crater, Mars

For more information on NASA's Mars missions, visit mars.nasa.gov

Image Credit: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech/Arizona State University

Special Thanks to Perseverance Image Bot and Niraj Sanghvi

Image Date: Sol 459: Left Mastcam-Z Camera, imaged at 10:09:11.660 (local mean solar time)

Release Date: June 5, 2022

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