Perseverance rover acquired this image using its Right Mastcam-Z camera. Mastcam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rover’s mast. This image was acquired on Feb. 6, 2024 (Sol 1054) at the local mean solar time of 11:54:39. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
I love pictures from the surface of Mars. The desolation and monotone color of the landscape is beautiful in it’s own way, but I also see those boulders and start to think about their origins and how long they’ve been sitting there. Are they fragments of meteors? Are they pieces of the crust that were ejected in massive explosions from impacts? It’s all just so cool!
The science team at JPL believe they were washed into the crater by raging floods around 3.5 billion years ago
In the shadow of the big rock on top the right, are those dead pixels?
Looks that way - See this from the MastCam team - https://mastcamz.asu.edu/bad-pixels/
I’m gonna need a banana for scale, here. smh.
Sadly I don’t have a process for calculating scale on this mission MSL has one, but it does not work on M2020
Sadly, I see no banana plants on Mars, as yet.
