NASA's Perseverance Rover Offers Stunning Views of Mars' Large Crater from a Slippery Slope (Video, Photos)

NASA's Perseverance rover recently took a break from its Mars mountaineering expedition to explore its old stomping ground.

The car-sized Perseverance landed on the floor of the 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer-wide) Jezero Crater in February 2021 to search for signs of past life on Mars and collect dozens of samples for future return to Earth.

Perseverance has completed its work on the plains of Jezero and is now scaling the western rim of the crater to explore new and different Martian landscapes. Late last month, however, the rover took a break to enjoy the magnificent view of Jezero – and to share that view with its helpers on Earth.

View of the slope of a crater rim on Mars, with rover tracks in the foreground — Part of a color-enhanced mosaic captured by the Perseverance rover on September 27, 2024, as it climbed the western wall of Jezero Crater. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS)

Mission team members stitched together 44 photos taken by Perseverance on September 27, creating a mosaic showing many of the landmarks the rover explored.

“The image not only shows our past and present, but also shows the greatest challenge in getting to where we want to be in the future,” said Rick Welch, Perseverance deputy project manager from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California statement on Monday (October 28) when NASA shared the new images.

“If you look at the right side of the mosaic, you get an idea of what we are dealing with,” he added. “Mars didn’t want to make it easy for anyone to get to that ridge.”

Perseverance began its ascent in mid-August. The photos shown here were taken when it was about halfway up the western edge, near a spot the mission team calls “Faraway Rock.” However, the rover is not expected to reach the edge before early December as the journey is quite difficult.

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The ridge mentioned by Welch has a slope of about 20 degrees, NASA officials said. It is also slippery and consists of loose sand and dust on a brittle crust.

Another part of the color-enhanced mosaic captured by Perseverance on September 27, 2024, commented here. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

“Mars rovers have driven over steeper terrain, and they have driven over more slippery terrain, but this is the first time they've had to do both – on this scale,” said JPL's Camden Miller, a planner or “driver.” for Perseverance's mission, the same statement said.

“For every two steps forward that Perseverance takes, we have taken at least one step back,” added Miller, who also served as the driver of NASA’s Curiosity rover, which landed in Mars’ Gale Crater in 2012 and is still going strong . “The rover planners saw that this was going to be a long, hard job, so we sat down to think of some options.”

The tracks shown in this image indicate the slipperiness of the terrain encountered by NASA's Mars rover Perseverance during its climb to the rim of Jezero Crater. The image was captured on October 11, 2024 by one of the rover's navigation cameras. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Those options included driving the six-wheeled Perseverance in reverse, taking a switchback-heavy “cross-hang” approach, and staying near the northern edges of the slope, where more large, traction-enhancing rocks might be buried in the nearby subsoil are.

All three of these strategies have helped to some extent, but the northern edge method appears to offer the best value for money, so the rover team will prioritize this method.

“That’s the plan right now, but we may need to change things down the road,” Miller said. “No Mars rover mission has ever attempted to climb such a large mountain so quickly. The science team wants to get to the top of the crater rim as quickly as possible because of the scientific possibilities there. It's up to us rover planners to figure out a way to get them there.