Perseverance's first road trip to Three Forks

NASA’s Perseverance rover has been investigating rocks at the front of the delta in Mars’ Jezero Crater along the path indicated in this annotated image taken by the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The red star indicates the location of the rover in September 2022.

The delta is a fan-shaped feature where, billions of years ago, a river flowed into a lake and deposited rocks and sediments. Scientists consider the delta one of the best places on Mars to search for potential signs of ancient microbial life.

The annotations show the names of some of the key features Perseverance visited, such as “Enchanted Lake” and “Hogwallow Flats.”

MRO took this overhead image with its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera.

A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterise 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 will send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.