Malamaire’ View of ‘Citadelle’ Area
| Credit | NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS |
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This mosaic image (composed of multiple individual images taken by NASA's Perseverance rover) shows a rock outcrop in the area nicknamed "Citadelle" on the floor of Mars' Jezero Crater. The mosaic image has been nicknamed "Malamaire" by the rover team and includes a block of rock called "Rochette" (after "La Rochette," a small town in north-central France whose name also translates to "little rock"). Perseverance successfully collected its first two rock samples from Rochette in early September 2021. An annotated version of this panorama shows the location of Rochette.
The images in the mosaic were taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument on the 180th sol (Martian day) of the rover's mission. One version is presented in enhanced color to exaggerate the subtle red, green, and blue color differences among the materials in this scene. Another version is presented in natural color to simulate the approximate view that we would see with our own eyes if we were there. Additional versions combine images from the left and right Mastcam-Z cameras into anaglyphs (for red-blue glasses) that simulate a 3D view of the scene.
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize 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.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
Subsequent missions by NASA in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency) would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these cached samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California built and manages operations of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover for NASA.
For more information about the mission, go to: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020
Arizona State University in Tempe leads the operations of the Mastcam-Z instrument, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego.
