PIA26336: Perseverance Views 'Bright Angel'

https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA26336

NASA's Perseverance rover was traveling in the channel of an ancient river, Neretva Vallis, when it captured this view of an area of scientific interest nicknamed "Bright Angel" – the light-toned area in the distance at right. The rover used one of its navigation cameras on June 6, 2024, the 1,172nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission to take the image.

Bright Angel is at the base of the northern wall of the river channel, which fed Jezero Crater with fresh water billions of years ago. The area features light-toned rocky outcrops that may represent either ancient sediment that later filled the channel or possibly much older rock that was subsequently exposed by river erosion.

A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for 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 cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would 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 Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

For more about Perseverance: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

This image or video was catalogued by Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under Photo ID: PIA26336. This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing. Other languages: العربية ∙ беларуская (тарашкевіца) ∙ български ∙ català ∙ čeština ∙ dansk ∙ Deutsch ∙ English ∙ español ∙ فارسی ∙ français ∙ galego ∙ magyar ∙ հայերեն ∙ Bahasa Indonesia ∙ italiano ∙ 日本語 ∙ македонски ∙ മലയാളം ∙ Nederlands ∙ polski ∙ português ∙ русский ∙ sicilianu ∙ slovenščina ∙ Türkçe ∙ українська ∙ 简体中文 ∙ 繁體中文 ∙ +/−

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