This annotated image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows the journey NASA's Perseverance rover has taken and will take in the future as it heads toward Jezero Crater's delta on Mars. The white line depicts the route the rover has taken since it touched down at the "Octavia E. Butler Landing" site on Feb. 18, 2021, to its current location in the "South Séítah" geologic unit (light-blue dot). The rover will return to the landing site along the same route and then continue to the delta along the line in blue.

This map is composed of images from the MRO's High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE).

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.

JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

For more about Perseverance:

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020

nasa.gov/perseverance