Jezero Crater's Delta

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover looks out at the expanse of Jezero Crater’s river delta on April 11, 2022, the 406th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. This panorama is made up of 64 individual images from the rover’s Mastcam-Z camera system and stitched together after the files were sent back from Mars.

The colour bands of the image have been processed to improve visual contrast and accentuate color differences. The sky would not actually look blue to a human explorer on the Red Planet.

The delta formed billions of years ago from sediment that an ancient river carried to the mouth of the lake that once existed in the crater. Aeolian bedforms (sand dunes) can be seen running along the base of the delta. The hills visible on the distant horizon to the far left of the image – about 6 kilometers away from the rover – are actually part of the rim of Jezero Crater.

Subsequent NASA missions in cooperation with ESA would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.