PIA22073: View From Within 'Perseverance Valley' on Mars (Enhanced Color)
 Target Name:  Mars
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Mars Exploration Rover (MER)
 Spacecraft:  Opportunity
 Instrument:  Panoramic Camera
 Product Size:  10000 x 1685 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  Arizona State University
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA22073.tif (19.75 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA22073.jpg (1.541 MB)

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

This enhanced-color view from within "Perseverance Valley," on the inner slope of the western rim of Endurance Crater on Mars, includes wheel tracks from the Opportunity rover's descent of the valley. The Panoramic Camera (Pancam) on Opportunity's mast took the component images of the scene during the period Sept. 4 through Oct. 6, 2017, corresponding to sols (Martian days) 4840 through 4871 of the rover's work on Mars.

Perseverance Valley is a system of shallow troughs descending eastward about the length of two football fields from the crest of the crater rim to the floor of the crater. This panorama spans from northeast on the left to northwest on the right, including portions of the crater floor (eastward) in the left half and of the rim (westward) in the right half. Opportunity began descending Perseverance Valley in mid-2017 (see map) as part of an investigation into how the valley formed.

Rover wheel tracks are darker brown, between two patches of bright bedrock, receding toward the horizon in the right half of the scene.

This view combines multiple images taken through three different Pancam filters. The selected filters admit light centered on wavelengths of 753 nanometers (near-infrared), 535 nanometers (green) and 432 nanometers (violet). The three color bands are combined here with enhancement to make differences in surface materials easier to see.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

For more information about Opportunity, visit http://www.nasa.gov/rovers and http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov.

Photojournal Note: Also available is the full resolution TIFF file PIA22073_full.tif. This file may be too large to view from a browser; it can be downloaded onto your desktop by right-clicking on the previous link and viewed with image viewing software.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

Image Addition Date:
2017-12-06