PIA24429: Perseverance's Big Wheel
 Target Name:  Mars
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Mars 2020 Rover
 Spacecraft:  Perseverance
 Instrument:  Hazard Avoidance Camera (M2020) 
 Product Size:  1280 x 960 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  JPL
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA24429.tif (3.568 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA24429.jpg (162.6 kB)

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 high-resolution image shows one of the six wheels aboard NASA's Perseverance Mars rover, which landed on Feb. 18, 2021. The image was taken by one of Perseverance's color Hazard Cameras (Hazcams).

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 (the European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these cached samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 mission is part of a larger program that includes missions to the Moon as a way to 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 and Curiosity rovers.

For more information about the mission, go to https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech

Image Addition Date:
2021-02-19