Perseverance Rock Cores From Wildcat Ridge

A CLOSER LOOK

This pair of images shows two cylinders of rock the size of classroom chalk inside the drill of NASA's Perseverance rover from an outcrop called "Wildcat Ridge" in Mars' Jezero Crater. The image of the rock core on the left, called "Hazeltop," was taken by Perseverance's Mastcam-Z instrument on July 25, 2022, the 509th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The image on the right, of the rock core called "Bearwallow," was taken on Aug. 2, 2022, the 516th sol. Each core is about 0.5 inches, or 13 millimeters, in diameter and 2.4 inches, or 60 millimeters, long. They were taken from an ancient river delta in Jezero Crater, a fan-shaped area where, billions of years ago, a river once flowed into a lake and deposited rocks and sediment. Scientists interpret these rocks to be fine-grained sedimen

Explore NASA's original image record for credits and available downloads.