NASA's Perseverance Rover Zooms in on Ancient Mars River | JPL

NASA's Perseverance Rover Zooms in on Ancient Mars River | JPL

After 1,000 Martian days of exploration, NASA’s Perseverance rover is studying rocks that show several eras in the history of a river delta billions of years old. Scientists are investigating this region of Mars, known as Jezero Crater, to see if they can find evidence of ancient life recorded in the rocks. Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley provides a guided tour of a richly detailed panorama of the rover’s location in November 2023, taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument.

Composed of 993 individual images and 2.38 billion pixels, this 360-degree mosaic looks in all directions from a location the rover science team calls “Airey Hill.” Portions of the rover itself are visible in the scene, appearing more distorted toward the edges as a result of the image processing. 

A color enhancement applied to the image increases contrast and accentuates color differences. By approximating what the scene would look like under Earth-like lighting conditions, the adjustment allows mission scientists to use their everyday experience to interpret the landscape. 

The view on Mars would be darker and more reddish. 

Learn more about Perseverance: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020

Celebrating 2+ Years on Mars

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 return to Earth.

Mars Helicopter (Ingenuity)

Launch: July 30, 2020    

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

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS; ESA/DLR/FU-Berlin

Duration: 3 minutes

Release Date: Dec. 27, 2023

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