The six-wheeled scientist came across the crater during his latest scientific campaign in search of rock samples that could be brought back to Earth for further study.
The Mastcam-Z instrument aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover recently collected 152 images while peering deep into Belva Crater, a large impact crater inside the much larger Jesero Crater. Woven into a dramatic mosaic, the results are not only eye-catching, but also provide the rover’s science team with some deep insights into Jezero’s interior.
“Rover missions typically end with bedrock exploration in small, flat exposures in the rover’s immediate workspace,” said Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “That’s why our science team was so keen to image and study Belva. Impact craters can offer spectacular views and vertical sections that provide important clues to the origin of these rocks with a perspective and scale that we don’t normally experience.
On Earth, geology professors often take their students to visit highway “cuts”—places where construction crews have cut vertically into the rock to make way for roads—that allow them to see rock layers and other geological features that are not see on the surface. On Mars, impact craters like Belva may provide a kind of natural pathway.
Signs of past water
Perseverance took the images of the basin on April 22 (the 772nd Martian day or salt of the mission) while parked just west of Belva Crater’s rim on a light-colored rocky outcrop that the mission’s science team calls “Echo Creek.” Created by a meteorite impact centuries ago, the roughly 0.6-mile-wide (0.9-kilometer-wide) crater reveals numerous places of exposed bedrock, as well as a region where sedimentary layers slope steeply downward.
These “sinking troughs” could indicate the presence of a large Martian sandbar made of sediments that was deposited billions of years ago by a river channel flowing into the lake that once contained the Jezero crater.
The scientific team suspects that the large stones in the foreground are either pieces of rock uncovered by meteorite impact or that they may have been transported into the crater by the river system. Scientists will search for answers by continuing to compare elements found in the bedrock near the rover with the larger rock layers visible in the far crater walls.
To aid these efforts, the mission also created an anaglyph, or 3D, version of the mosaic. “The anaglyph can help us visualize the geologic relationships between crater wall outcrops,” Stack said. “But it also provides an opportunity to just enjoy a great view. When I look at this mosaic through red and blue 3D glasses, I am transported to Belva’s western rim and wonder what future astronauts would think if they had to stand where Perseverance once stood when it took this shot.”
More about the mission
A key objective for the Perseverance mission to Mars is astrobiology, including cached samples that may contain 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 store Martian rocks and regolith.
Subsequent NASA missions, in collaboration with ESA, will 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 lunar-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 operated for NASA by Caltech, built and operates the Perseverance rover.
For more information on Perseverance:
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
News Media Contacts
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Alanna Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
301-286-6284 / 202-358-1501
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
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