Composed of five images, this mosaic of the Jezero Crater’s “Delta Scarp” was taken on March 17, 2021, by the Remote Microscopic Imager (RMI) camera aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover from 1.4 miles (2.25 kilometers) away. Scientists believe the 377-foot-wide (115-meter-wide) escarpment is a portion of the remnants of a fan-shaped deposit of sediments that resulted from the confluence between an ancient river and an ancient lake.
An annotated version of the same image (directly below) reveals location of a conglomerate (rock composed of coarse-grained pebbles mixed with sand) and examples of crossbedding (tilted layers of sedimentary rock that can result from water passing over a loose bed of sediment).
Part of the SuperCam instrument, the RMI is able to spot an object the size of a softball from nearly a mile away, allowing scientists to take images of details from a long distance. It also provides fine details of nearby targets zapped by SuperCam’s laser.
SuperCam is led by Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where the instrument's Body Unit was developed. That part of the instrument includes several spectrometers as well as control electronics and software.
The Mast Unit was developed and built by several laboratories of the CNRS (the French research center) and French universities under the contracting authority of CNES (the French space agency). This composite image of the “Delta Scarp” in Mars’ Jezero Crater was generated using data from two imagers aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover. Taken by the rover’s Mastcam-Z, the bottom image shows both the base and plateau of the escarpment. The inset above, created from a mosaic of five Remote Microscopic Imager (RMI) pictures, zooms in on a 377-foot-wide (115-meter-wide) portion of the scarp, allowing closer inspection of some of its intriguing geologic features.
Part of the rover’s SuperCam instrument, the RMI is able to spot an object the size of a softball from nearly a mile away, allowing scientists to take images of details from a long distance. It also provides fine details of nearby targets zapped by SuperCam’s laser.
