Here's Perseverance, Seen From Space

By Nancy Atkinson October 4, 2021
Here's Perseverance, Seen From Space

The Mars Perseverance rover is on the move! The HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted the rover from above, the first view since shortly after the rover landed in February 2021. Perseverance appears as the white speck in the center of the image above, in the the "South Séítah" area of Mars' Jezero Crater.

The HiRISE team said the rover is about 700 meters (2,300 feet) from its original landing site.

“The rover doesn’t drive in a straight line,” wrote team member Shane Byrne, “and has covered much more ground than that, and faint wheel tracks on the nearby ground are visible.”

You can see the various arrays of sand dunes in the image, and HiRISE shots like this one allow the rover team to choose the best route to get to their primary target. These images also help put the rover’s observations in context within Jezero Crater.

https://twitter.com/HiRISE/status/1442945976541478914

HiRISE also took dramatic images of the rover’s landing, nabbing a shot of Perseverance rover as it descended through the Martian atmosphere, hanging under its parachute, as well as photos of the “debris” from landing: the discarded backshell and parachute.

The Mars 2020 descent stage holding NASA’s Perseverance rover can be seen falling through the Martian atmosphere, its parachute trailing behind, in this image taken on February 18, 2021 by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA/JPL/UArizona

ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) also took an image from orbit of Perseverance, about a week after the rover landed.

Perseverance will spend its mission (two years primary mission, which will likely be extended) searching for signs of past microbial life. Jezero Crater appears to have a preserved river delta and clay-rich sedimentary deposits, leading planetary geologists to deduce this crater could have hosted a standing body of water billions of years ago. For this reason, it was selected as the landing site for the mission, since it is believed to be a good place to find evidence of past life.

Rest assured, MRO and the other orbiters at Mars will continue sending back images of the various rovers and landers on Mars, and we’ll keep posting ‘em!

See more stunning view of Mars at the HiRISE website, or follow @HiRISE on Twitter

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com