NASA’s Trailblazer Mars rover has taken some pretty stunning images since landing on the red planet early last year, and recently the rover brought out a new panorama of Mars, consisting of more than 1,000 separate images with a total of 2.5 billion pixels, making it the most detailed view of the Martian landscape ever taken from the planet’s surface.
This image was taken of an ancient delta in Jezero Crater, where the Trail is searching for signs of life as part of its second science campaign. The delta was formed by a river that flowed into Lake Jezero some 3.5 billion years ago, depositing mud and sand on the floor of the crater.
Trailblazer used its Mastcam-Z camera system to capture no less than 1,118 individual images in mid-July, which were stitched together to form a 2.5 billion pixel image.
The Trailblazer probe’s footprint can be seen on the far left of the image, with a 32-foot (10-meter) rocky cliff directly in front of it. These rocks have been around for billions of years and have withstood wind erosion, slowly forming the jagged shapes shown in the image.
These rocks are thought to be some of the finest grained sedimentary rocks in the delta and are therefore a good place to look for life. As part of its scientific operations in the region, the Trail is drilling these rocks to analyze their chemistry and mineralogy.
