Figure AClick here for animation
NASA's Perseverance rover used its Mastcam-Z camera to capture this enhanced color view of the eroded eastern edge of the delta within Mars' Jezero Crater on April 7, 2022, the 402nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission.
Figure A is a natural color view of the image, meaning it has been calibrated to simulate the approximate view that the human eye would perceive on the Red Planet.
The animation is a video that zooms in on a deposit of boulders at the edge of the delta. These boulders may have been moved there by high-energy floods in the ancient past. Perseverance will be exploring and sampling boulder deposits like this one in 2023 after dropping off its first cache of samples at a site called Three Forks as part of the Mars Sample Return campaign.
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.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more about Perseverance: mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
