Perseverance and Mars 2020 Spacecraft Components on the Surface

This first image of NASA's Perseverance Rover on the surface of Mars from the High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) shows the many parts of the Mars 2020 mission landing system that got the rover safely on the ground. The image was taken on Feb. 19, 2021. The rover itself sits at the center of a blast pattern created by the hovering descent stage that lowered it there using the sky crane maneuver. The descent stage flew off to crash at a safe distance, creating a V-shaped debris pattern that points back toward the rover. Earlier in the landing sequence, Perseverance jettisoned its heat shield and parachute, which can be seen on the surface in the separate locations illustrated. These objects are highly visible on the surface of Mars now but will become dustier with time and slowly fade into the background over years. HiRISE will continue to image the Perseverance landing site to track the progress of the rover and changes with the other pieces of hardware that accompanied it. A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will charact

Date

2021-02-22

Photographer / author

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Collection

JPL

Archive

NASA Image and Video Library

Type

photograph

Need photos for a whole script? Add Find Any Photo to Claude and ask for this one by its id: 23669.