This last picture of the segment comes to us from Mars. The Perseverance rover has obtained an amazing color image of its surroundings at Jezero Crater. The image you see here doesn’t allow for a full appreciation of the details. This image was created from seventy individual images that were mosaiced together. The color was then enhanced to make the variations from stone to stone easier to see. 

This image was acquired to make it possible to better select the rover’s next sample site. Acquired using Percy’s Mastcam-Z camera system, the rover’s location is believed to have been shaped by past flooding. It is hoped that this region’s rocks contain locked in their minerals the history of Mars’s watery past. 

Unfortunately, we’re going to have to wait sometime before we can study those rocks. Perseverance will be collecting rocks for some time, and after that collection is complete, an as-yet-unnamed mission will go to Mars to collect those samples and return them to Earth. It will be years – possibly a decade – before analysis can be done, so for now, we will enjoy these images and learn what we can through our robot colleagues.

More Information

NASA JPL press release