Say cheese! Rover sends striking selfie from Mars

NASA’s Perseverance rover took a self-portrait against a sweeping backdrop of ancient Martian terrain at a location the science team calls “Lac de Charmes.”

Assembled from 61 individual images, the image shows Perseverance training its mast on a rocky outcrop on which it had just made a circular abrasion patch, with the western rim of Jezero Crater stretching into the background.

The selfie was captured on March 11, the 1,797th Martian day, or sol, of the mission, during the rover’s deepest push west beyond the crater.

Perseverance is in its fifth science campaign, known as the Northern Rim Campaign, of its mission on the Red Planet. The Lac de Charmes region represents some of the most scientifically compelling terrain the rover has visited.

“We took this image when the rover was in the ‘Wild West’ beyond the Jezero Crater rim — the farthest west we have been since we landed at Jezero a little over five years ago,” said Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

“We had just abraded and analysed the ‘Arethusa’ outcrop, and the rover was sitting in a spot that provided a great view of both the Jezero Rim and the local terrain outside of the crater.”