This view of the outer rim of Jezero Crater’s 150-meter-high rim was taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument aboard NASA’s Perseverance on May 15, 2025, day 1,505, or sol, of the rover’s mission to Mars.

The brightly colored rocks exposed along the slope, running from the left center to the right center of the image, belong to a formation the science team calls the “Broom Point Member,” a 245-foot-thick (75-meter-thick) pile of ancient rock. This layered bedrock sequence is likely more than 3.9 billion years old, making it some of the oldest terrain ever examined by a Mars rover. Evidence uncovered by Perseverance indicates that this thick section of rock was built up by repeated asteroid strikes, with layers tilted at near-vertical angles exceeding 80 degrees due to the subsequent colossal impacts that created the Isidis Basin and Jezero Crater.

The rover’s footprints are visible in the image, showing Perseverance’s descent down the steep slope of the crater rim.

Figure A includes annotations:

• Dashed yellow lines indicate the upper and lower limits of the Broom Point Member
• Black lines indicate rover routes
• White circles indicate locations where the rover stopped to collect scientific data
• Red icons indicate the locations of samples collected by Perseverance: “Bell Island” on April 22, 2025 (Sol 1483) and “Main River” on March 10, 2025 (Sol 1441)

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover. Arizona State University leads operations of the Mastcam-Z instrument, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, on the design, manufacturing, testing and operation of the cameras, and in collaboration with the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen on the design, manufacturing and testing of the calibration targets.

For more information about Perseverance: science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/