Recent Sights From Mars

Perseverance captured this image of Ingenuity's 54th flight on Aug. 3, 2023. This flight lasted just 24 seconds, as it was a short hop up and down to test the helicopter's capabilities after it cut its 53rd flight short on July 22.

The July 22 flight ended earlier than planned because a flight-contingency program was triggered, which caused the helicopter to land. According to a NASA statement, the rotorcraft's data most likely did not sync up with its navigation program, which triggered the program and ended the flight. 

NASA's four-pound Mars helicopter Ingenuity took this image from an altitude of 16 feet during its 54th flight on Aug. 3. The rover Perseverance is seen at the top of the image to the right of center. Perseverance is a car-sized 2,260 pound rover that landed at the Jezero crater on Mars in 2021 to look for signs of past life and collect regolith and rock samples for possible further study on Earth. 

Data from the Mastcam-Z instrument on the Perseverance rover generated this image taken Aug. 2 of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter, one day before the 54th flight. The $2.4 billion rover and $80 million helicopter launched together to Mars on July 30, 2020.  

NASA says its Curiosity rover discovered these cracks in the Martian soil in 2021 while climbing Mount Sharp. A recent paper published in Nature provides evidence that the unique Y-shaped junctures of these cracks may indicate Mars had wet-dry cycles, which is one of the prevailing theories on the cause of microbial life's formation on Earth. If Mars truly did have wet-dry cycles, it might have been conducive for microbial life to form in the past, and could provide more information on the start of life on Earth, as Mars, unlike Earth, lacks tectonic plates, meaning the planet's history is preserved for scientists to study.

Curiosity's Mastcam took this close up of the mud cracks on June 20, 2021. According to NASA, the rover discovered these cracks in a transitional area of soil on Mount Sharp between one area enriched with clay minerals and another enriched with sulfate minerals.

After completing one of the most difficult climbs it faced, the rover stopped by this estimated 60-foot wide impact crater within a cluster of craters. This picture is a 360 degree mosaic view of of a location on Mars, "Jau," created on Earth by stitching together 129 images that Curiosity captured on July 25, NASA says. The color is adjusted to the lighting conditions the human eye would see on Earth.

This map shows the path Curiosity took during its hardest climb of the mission from May to July. Each dot along the path is a stop the rover made, starting from the start of the climb in Marker Band Valley, located at the very top of the image. This was the most difficult climb so far due to conditions like a steep 23-degree incline, slippery sand and rocks the size of wheels, NASA says.

During its difficult climb, Curiosity left tracks in the Martian soil, seen in this panoramic image, when it unexpectedly stopped mid-drive, also called a fault. This occurred due to the bright rock on the right side of the image, seen above the rover's wheel, NASA says. More tracks are visible at this part of the panorama and show how Curiosity repositioned to try and continue past the rock again.