A ventifact is a wind carved rock

Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image using its Right Mastcam-Z camera set at full zoom (110mm).

Mastcam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rover's mast.

This image was acquired on July 22, 2026 (Sol 1927)

I'll add the drive data when JPL release the official info, but it looks like a drive of 5-6 meters East-northeast. These post-drive images were acquired on July 22, 2026.

So little of Mars has been explored by rovers that every new vista and every new rock they see could become a major discovery. So why has Perseverance now driven hundreds of meters back to the same spot it stopped at a month ago?

Episode 275

The difficulty in recognizing the size of features in images from Mars was my inspiration for including recognizable objects in these images, including an astronaut. Here I’ll reveal my DIY techniques for how they’re fit into Martian landscapes.

A rough estimate (red dot) of the new location. If correct the rover is enjoying a walkabout

More details in the comments

Assembled from 3 overlapping images from the SHERLOC WATSON camera.

Tiled L-NavCam

NASA’s Perseverance rover appears as a green speck on the Martian surface on June 13, 2026, a day before the robotic explorer marked a distance milestone, having traveled a full marathon (26.2 miles, or 42.195 kilometers) on the Red Planet. Perseverance reached that distance after five years and four months of driving — on the 1,890th Martian day, or sol, of its mission; the previous record holder, NASA’s Opportunity rover, took 11 years and two months to reach the same milestone.

This image was taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) using its High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. The rover’s tracks can be seen tracing the surface. The rover is in an area west of Jezero Crater that the science team is calling “Arbot.”

Figure A is the same image with a yellow circle indicating Perseverance.

Managed for NASA by Caltech, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California manages operations of the Perseverance rover and MRO on behalf of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built MRO and supports its operations. The University of Arizona, in Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by BAE Systems in Boulder, Colorado.

cross-posted from: https://jlai.lu/post/39584904

post-drive NavCam

Episode 271

Decades ago, a trick of the light and a low-resolution image produced the infamous Face on Mars. Multiple books and movies followed. A new image from Perseverance doesn't quite rival the Face, but it does offer some Escher-esque visual trickery.

I've never seen a mosaic line up this well in the raw images.

Credit: NASA JPL

Only possible in Mars climate and gravity?

This is all taken from data released by JPL a short time after each drive

4-tile L-NavCam acquired at the end of the drive on sol 1883

Episode 270 Hypervelocity impacts by asteroids, and more rarely comets, can excavate a huge hole in the ground and also generate instant lava by melting the target rocks. Jezero crater should have abundant impact melt and now Perseverance may have found some.

End of drive tiled NavCam looking back after a drive of ~45 minutes, heading was Southeast