Perseverance's Mid-Climb View of Jezero Crater
This enhanced-color, high-resolution mosaic showing Mars' Jezero Crater was taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument on NASA's Perseverance as the rover climbed the crater's western wall. Many of the landmarks visited by the rover during its 3½-year exploration of Jezero can be seen, and the vehicle's tracks are also visible.
The 44 frames used to generate the mosaic were acquired on Sept. 27, 2024, the 1,282nd Martian day, or sol, of Perseverance's mission. The rover was near a location the Perseverance science team calls "Faraway Rock," about halfway up the climb.
Figure A: Enhanced color - annotated
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Figure A is a version of the enhanced-color mosaic with annotations showing the distance (in kilometers) between the rover and nearly 50 labeled points of interest.
The locations labeled include, from left:
- Tuff Cliff, a rocky outcrop located in the same river channel (and about 480 meters east of) where Perseverance discovered the "Cheyava Falls" rock
- Ingenuity's final airfield, which is called "Valinor Hills"
- "Beehive Geyser," located on the eastern side of the "Margin Unit" and adjacent to the Neretva Vallis channel
- "Bunsen Peak" is where Perseverance extracted its 21st rock core
- "Jurabi Point" is a "triple junction" where the boulder-rich unit, upper fan sedimentary rock, and Margin Unit intersect
- Both Perseverance and Ingenuity operated at "Gnaraloo Bay" is a "triple junction" where the boulder-rich unit, upper fan sedimentary rock, and Margin Unit intersect " in December 2023
- "Mandu Wall" is where the rover began its fourth science campaign on Sept. 7, 2023
- "Hans Amundsen M.W.," which stands for "memorial workspace," is where Perseverance collected the "Pelican Point" cored rock sample on Sept. 25, 2023
- "Three Forks" is the name of the location where Perseverance deposited 10 of its filled tubes in December 2022 and January 2023
- Belva Crater was imaged by Perseverance on April 22, 2023
- "Pinestand" is an isolated hill that mission scientists think was formed billions of years ago by a deep, fast-moving river. Composed of sedimentary layers stacked on top of one another, this site was imaged but not visited by the rover.
- The landing site is where the rover touched down on Feb. 18, 2021
- "Cape Nukshak" is a river channel the mission considered as a route to get to the river delta. The team decided to use another river-channel route called "Hawksbill Gap."
- "Enchanted Lake" is where the mission first got its first up-close look at sedimentary rocks
- The flat-topped hill nicknamed "Kodiak" was imaged by the rover on April 18, 2021
Figure B: Enhanced color - cropped
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Figure B is a cropped version of the enhanced-color mosaic.
Figure C: Enhanced color - cropped - annotated
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Figure C is an annotated and cropped version of the enhanced-color mosaic.
Figure D: Natural color
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Figure D is a natural color version of the mosaic.
Figure E: Natural color - annotated
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Figure E is an annotated version of the natural-color mosaic.
Figure F: Natural color - cropped
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Figure F is a cropped version of the natural-color mosaic.
Figure G: Natural color - cropped - annotated
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Figure G is an annotated and cropped version of the natural-color mosaic.
In the enhanced-color versions of the mosaic, the color bands of the image have been processed to improve visual contrast and accentuate color differences.
Arizona State University leads the operations of the Mastcam-Z instrument, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, on the design, fabrication, testing, and operation of the cameras, and in collaboration with the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen on the design, fabrication, and testing of the calibration targets.
A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet's geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA's Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more about Perseverance: science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/