NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover captured this stunning image using its Left Mastcam-Z camera, which is actually a a pair of cameras located high on the rover’s mast. It’s currently traversing across the Jezero crater and exploring the Delta Front, which is campaign #2 of the mission. One of the major goals of this mission is seeking evidence of past life.
During this mission, it will be studying tjhe fine-grained clay-rich rocks in these environments, as they are some of the best at preserving ancient biomarkers. The latter refers to “molecular fossils,” or complex organic molecules created by life and preserved in rock for up to billions of years for certain molecular classes. Perseverance is also going to be drilling core samples that will eventually be returned to Earth where future scientists can analyze and hopefully, identify as well as extract organics. Even though Perseverance and China’s Zhurong rover probably won’t cross paths, they are each capturing never before seen footage of the Red Planet.
LEGO City Space Mars Research Shuttle 60226 Space Shuttle Toy Building Kit with Mars Rover and Astronaut Minifigures, Top STEM Toy for Boys and Girls (273 Pieces)
- Build an exciting space shuttle toy model that offers plenty of imaginative action possibilities and a Mars rover with articulated grappling arm to retrieve geodes!
- Includes 2 LEGO City Mars astronaut minifigures, plus a helidrone and storage drone
- Research shuttle measures over 3” (9cm) high, 9” (23cm) long and 8” (21cm) wide Mars rover measures over 1” (5cm) high, 2” (7cm) long and 2” (6cm) wide Helidrone measures over 1” (4cm) long and 1” (3cm) wide Storage drone measures over 1” (3cm) high and 1” (3cm) long Mars scenery build measures over 1” (3cm) wide
- 273 pieces –Astronaut construction toy for boys and girls aged 5+ and for fans of LEGO toys and kids of all ages
- This LEGO City Mars Research Shuttle 60226 outer space toy set makes a great gift for kids and can be built together with all other original LEGO toys and LEGO bricks for more creative play
Perseverance and the science and engineering teams are working together to pick the right rocks to core, using a suite of onboard instruments to understand mineralogy, elemental distributions, and detect whether organic molecules are present,” said NASA.