The rock beside Perseverance had just been ground flat when the rover turned its camera on itself.
NASA assembled the selfie from 61 individual images. It was captured on March 11, the 1,797th Martian day, or sol, of the mission, at a spot the science team calls “Lac de Charmes.” In the frame, the rover faces a rocky outcrop marked with a circular abrasion patch, and the western rim of Jezero Crater runs off into the distance.
It is the sixth selfie Perseverance has taken since landing.
Farthest west so far
The picture came during the rover’s deepest push west beyond the crater. Perseverance is working through its fifth science campaign, the Northern Rim Campaign, and Lac de Charmes is some of the most scientifically compelling terrain it has reached.
Katie Stack Morgan, the project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, described the setting. “We took this image when the rover was in the ‘Wild West’ beyond the Jezero Crater rim – the farthest west we have been since we landed at Jezero a little over five years ago,” she said. “We had just abraded and analyzed the ‘Arethusa’ outcrop, and the rover was sitting in a spot that provided a great view of both the Jezero Rim and the local terrain outside of the crater.”
What the abrasion revealed
Abrading means grinding down part of a rock’s surface so the team can study what lies inside. At Arethusa, the technique showed the outcrop is made of igneous minerals that probably predate the formation of Jezero Crater.
Igneous rocks with large mineral crystals start underground, as molten rock cools and hardens.
