Description Members of NASA’s Perseverance Mars mission team gather in the Mars Yard at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California with a certificate from Guinness World Records marking the rover distance record on the Red Planet. Positioned in front of the team is OPTIMISM (Operational Perseverance Twin for Integration of Mechanisms and Instruments […]
Description Rover tracks and a rocky Martian landscape are shown in this image captured by one of the navigation cameras (navcams) aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover on Oct. 11, 2026, the 2,006th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. During that sol’s drive, spanning 299.6 feet (91.31 meters), the mission passed a major milestone: pushing Perseverance’s total […]
Description NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera to capture this 360-degree panorama of “Turquoise Bay,” a geologic area of interest in the “Margin Unit.” The 818 images used to create the natural-color panorama were captured between Oct. 5 and Oct. 16, 2023, the 933rd to 944th Martian days, or sols, of the mission. […]
When NASA’s Perseverance rover reached the inner edge of Mars’ Jezero Crater in September 2023, mission scientists were surprised by what they found. Called the “Margin Unit,” the geologic area stretches along the shoreline of an ancient Martian lake, so they expected sedimentary rocks, which would have formed as layers of sand piled on top […]
Description This composite of seven images from the Mastcam-Z instrument aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover shows Earth, visible as a small bright dot moving from upper left to lower right, passing behind the Martian moon Phobos on July 2, 2026, 1,907th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The black background is the result of […]
Background Human exploration of Mars will expose crews to a persistent, fine particulate environment whose physicochemical properties and health implications remain only partly understood. Because no samples of authentic Martian airborne dust have been returned to Earth, NASA must rely on lunar dust toxicology, Martian regolith simulants, and extensive rover/lander geochemical and mineralogical datasets to […]
Description This orbital map shows the path NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took to get to a location the science team has dubbed the “Broom Point member,” a sequence of layered bedrock likely more than 3.9 billion years old. As planned, the rover landed inside Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021. It investigated the crater’s western delta […]
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover recently took a self-portrait against a sweeping backdrop of ancient Martian terrain at a location the science team calls “Lac de Charmes.” Assembled from 61 individual images, the selfie shows Perseverance training its mast on a rocky outcrop on which it had just made a circular abrasion patch, with the western […]
Description NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera to capture this panorama of an area nicknamed “Arbot” on April 5, 2026, the 1,882nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission, during the rover’s deepest push west beyond Jezero Crater. Made of 46 images, the panorama offers one of the richest geological vistas of the […]
Description NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took this selfie on March 11, 2026, the 1,797th Martian day, or sol, of the mission, during the rover’s deepest push west beyond Jezero Crater. Assembled from 61 individual images, the selfie shows Perseverance training its mast on the “Arethusa” rocky outcrop after creating a whitish circular abrasion patch. The […]