MRO's HiRise Spots Perseverance Rover From Orbit

In the image below, if you look closely, you can make out a white spec in the center of the photograph. That speck is NASA's Perseverance rover cruising the South Seitah region of the Jezero Crater on Mars. The image was taken from orbit around Mars by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). HiRise is a camera on the MRO, also known as High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment.

HiRise is a scientific instrument operated by researchers from the University of Arizona in Tucson. It was constructed by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colorado. Perseverance appears to be operating in extremely harsh territory, with many ridges and valleys seen in the image.

The key mission objective for Perseverance is to search for signs of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet. The rover is also working to learn more about the geology and climate on Mars in the distant past. Data gathered by the rover will be combined with data from other rovers and spacecraft to help NASA prepare for future human missions to Mars.

Perseverance will collect rock and regolith samples from Mars that will eventually be returned to Earth for further study. Along with Perseverance, NASA is also operating the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. The helicopter is the first aircraft to fly on an extraterrestrial planet and is helping the Perseverance team scout and choose locations for the rover to study in-depth.

This month NASA will be unable to send commands to any of its spacecraft on or around Mars due to the conjunction. During the conjunction, Earth and Mars are on the opposite sides of the sun and any commands sent could be corrupted, resulting in unexpected behavior of the spacecraft. NASA will be able to resume sending commands by the middle of October.