Perseverance rover on Mars spotted from space in striking new satellite image [View all]

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By Brandon Specktor 1 day ago

Percy is moving on to its next drill site in Mars' lonely Jezero Crater.

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Like a white gumball dropped in the sand, NASA's Perseverance rover glints amongst the cliffs of Mars in a striking new satellite image.

Perseverance – or "Percy," to its familiars – has been rolling around Mars' massive Jezero Crater ever since it completed a death-defying parachute drop onto the Red Planet in February. In this image, captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Percy pushes through the dirt of South Séítah – a series of rocky ridges covered by sand dunes – in order to find a nice, ancient boulder to drill into.

South Séítah (which comes from a Navajo language word meaning "amidst the sand," according to NASA) sits about 650 feet (200 meters) from the site of Percy's first successful drilling operation, completed in early September. Targeting a large boulder nicknamed "Rochette," Percy extracted a pencil-thin core sample, which NASA researchers hope to retrieve and deliver to Earth in a future unmanned mission.

https://www.space.com/perseverance-mars-rover-spotted-by-recon-orbiter