Perseverance Rover Captures 360° Panorama of Mars' Jezero Crater

The 2.38 billion pixel image, a mosaic of 993 individual photos, provides a detailed view of the ancient lake believed to have been filled with organic material 3.5 billion years ago.

• NASA's Perseverance rover has created a 360° panorama of the Jezero Crater on Mars, a region believed to have been flooded with water in the past, making it a promising location to search for evidence of life.
• The panorama is a mosaic of 993 individual images captured by Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z instrument over three days in November 2023, resulting in a 2.38 billion pixel image.
• The rover, which landed on Mars on February 18, 2021, has been studying the rocky Martian environment, looking for signs of biosignatures that could indicate conditions once favorable to microbial life.
• Jezero Crater is of particular interest as it is believed to have been a deep lake filled with organic material around 3.5 billion years ago, making it an ideal place to look for extraterrestrial microbes.
• Perseverance is set to continue its exploration, moving 'upstream' to the point where a river carved a canyon in the crater rim, and then climbing a natural ramp to the rim itself.

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