NASA’s Perseverance rover has captured some incredible imagery since landing on the Red Planet early last year, but none as detailed as its latest effort. A newly arrived panorama presents the Martian landscape in the most detail ever captured from the surface, a stunning mosaic made up of more than 1,000 separate images.
The incredible image was captured in an ancient delta in the Jezero Crater, where Perseverance is on the hunt for signs of life as part of its second science campaign. This delta was created by a river that flowed into Lake Jezero around 3.5 billion years ago, depositing mud and sand on the crater floor.
Perseverance captured this new view using its Mastcam-Z camera system, snapping no less than 1,118 individual images in mid-July that were stitched together to form a color-enhanced 2.5-billion-pixel mosaic.
The rover’s tracks can be seen at the very left of the image where it rolled into the crater, while a rocky 32-foot (10-m) cliff sits directly in front of it. These rocks have been in place for billions of years, enduring wind erosion to slowly take on their jagged forms.
These rocks are believed to be some of the finest-grained sedimentary rocks in the delta, and are therefore good places to search for life. As part of its science operations in the area, Perseverance is drilling into these rocks to analyze their chemistry and mineralogy.
The video below offers a guided tour of the new panorama, while a full resolution version is available at the source link.
Source: NASA