The rover took the picture — its fifth since touchdown in February 2021 — between stops investigating the Martian floor.
A Martian mud satan photobombed NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover because it took a selfie on Could 10 to mark its 1,five hundredth sol (Martian day) exploring the Crimson Planet. On the time, the six-wheeled rover was parked in an space nicknamed “Witch Hazel Hill,” an space on Jezero Crater’s rim that the rover has been exploring over the previous 5 months.
“The rover self-portrait on the Witch Hazel Hill space offers us an incredible view of the terrain and the rover {hardware},” mentioned Justin Maki, Perseverance imaging lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the mission. “The well-illuminated scene and comparatively clear environment allowed us to seize a mud satan situated 3 miles to the north in Neretva Vallis.”
The selfie additionally offers the engineering groups an opportunity to view and assess the state of the rover, its devices, and the general mud accumulation as Perseverance reached the 1,500-sol milestone. (A day on Mars is 24.6 hours, so 1,500 sols equals 1,541 Earth days.)
The brilliant mild illuminating the scene is courtesy of the excessive angle of the Solar on the time the pictures composing the selfie have been taken, lighting up Perseverance’s deck and casting its shadow under and behind the chassis. Instantly in entrance of the rover is the “Bell Island” borehole, the web ranking sampling location within the Witch Hazel Hill space.
This latest selfie, Perseverance’s fifth for the reason that mission started, was stitched collectively on Earth from a collection of 59 photos collected by the WATSON (Broad Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) digital camera on the finish of the robotic arm. It exhibits the rover’s distant sensing mast trying into the digital camera. To generate the model of the selfie with the mast trying on the borehole, WATSON took three further photos, concentrating on the reoriented mast.
“To get that selfie look, every WATSON picture has to have its personal distinctive area of view,” mentioned Megan Wu, a Perseverance imaging scientist from Malin House Science Techniques in San Diego. “Which means we needed to make 62 precision actions of the robotic arm. The whole process takes about an hour, nevertheless it’s price it. Having the mud satan within the background makes it a traditional. It is a nice shot.”
The mud overlaying the rover is visible proof of the rover’s journey on Mars: By the point the picture was captured, Perseverance had abraded and analyzed a complete of 37 rocks and boulders with its science devices, collected 26 rock cores (25 sealed and 1 left unsealed), and traveled greater than 22 miles (36 kilometers).
“After 1,500 sols, we could also be a bit dusty, however our magnificence is greater than pores and skin deep,” mentioned Artwork Thompson, Perseverance venture supervisor at JPL. “Our multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator is giving us all the ability we want. All our programs and subsystems are within the inexperienced and clicking alongside, and our wonderful devices proceed to offer information that may feed scientific discoveries for years to return.”
The rover is at present exploring alongside the western rim of Jezero Crater, at a location the science staff calls “Krokodillen.”
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
2025-073