Dust Devil Photobombs Perseverance's Selfie
NASA's Perseverance rover took this selfie on May 10, 2025, marking its 1,500th Martian day, or sol, exploring the Red Planet. A dust devil twirls in the background, about 3 miles (5 kilometers) away, to the left of the rover. The small dark hole in the rock in front of the rover is the borehole made when Perseverance collected a sample dubbed "Bell Island."
The selfie is composed of 59 images taken by the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera on the end of the rover's robotic arm. The images were stitched together after being sent back to Earth. The selfie was further processed to improve visual contrast and accentuate color differences.
WATSON, part of an instrument called SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals), was built by Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) in San Diego and is operated jointly by MSSS and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Figure A is a version of the selfie in which the rover is looking down at the borehole.
Figure A
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Click here for a GIF or here for a video combining the main image and Figure A, in which the rover appears to look up and down.
Figure B is a cropped, annotated version of the selfie highlighting some of the rover's components.
Figure B
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- A: aluminum plate with U.S. flag
- B: SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) calibration target
- C: serial number on the front hazard-avoidance camera sunshade assembly
- D: wire bundle that supports entry, descent, and landing (EDL) hardware
- E: rover evolution plate
- F: Mastcam-Z calibration target
- G: high-gain antenna
- H: ultra-high frequency antenna
- I: JPL insignia plate
- J: Perseverance's arm (not seen). Just like humans taking a selfie on Earth, Perseverance's imaging team does their best to keep the rover's arm out of the shot, as they have here. When the images are combined for the selfie, it looks like there is no arm on the rover. The rover's process for taking a selfie is explained in this video.
- K: SkyCam
- L: SuperCam calibration target
- M: navigation cameras
- N: Mastcam-Z imagers
- O: SuperCam
- Oa: SuperCam microphone
- P: Mars dust accumulated on the rover's exterior
- Q: differential, part of Perseverance's "rocker-bogie" suspension system. The differential pivots around the silver-colored disk in the center, connecting the rockers to the body and each other, helping even out loads and reducing rover-body tilt.
- R: Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG)
- S: wheel
- T: "Send Your Name to Mars" plate carrying 10,932,295 names on three fingernail-sized chips
- U: robotic arm harness bulkhead
- V: Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA)
Figure C is an annotated version with an abridged number of annotations.
Figure C
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- aluminum plate with U.S. flag
- dust devil
- Bell Island sample borehole
- rover tracks
For more about Perseverance:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/