Pic of the Week: The Ongoing Perseverance Rover Mission

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover captured this mosaic of a hill nicknamed “Pinestand.”
(NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS)

This week’s image comes from NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance as it explores the to Jezero Crater. The photo was posted last month. It has been a little while since we directly our attention at the Red Planet.

The image shows what may be the result of a fast-moving river some time in the past. In the NASA write-up accompanying the photo above, we read:

“Pinestand” is an isolated hill bearing sedimentary layers that curve skyward, some as high as 66 feet (20 meters). Scientists think these tall layers may also have been formed by a powerful river, although they’re exploring other explanations, as well.

“These layers are anomalously tall for rivers on Earth,” [postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California Libby] Ives said. “But at the same time, the most common way to create these kinds of landforms would be a river.”