Planet Mars Crater Rim Drive | NASA Perseverance Rover View

Planet Mars Crater Rim Drive | NASA Perseverance Rover View

This animation shows the Perseverance Mars rover's point of view during a drive of 807 feet (246 meters) along the rim of Jezero Crater on Dec. 10, 2025, the 1,709th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Captured over two hours and 35 minutes, 53 Navigation Camera (Navcam) image pairs were combined with rover data on orientation, wheel speed, and steering angle, as well as data from Perseverance's Inertial Measurement Unit, and placed into a 3D virtual environment. The result is this reconstruction with virtual frames inserted about every 4 inches (0.1 meters) of drive progress.

Celebrating 4+ Years on Mars

Mission Name: Mars 2020

Rover Name: Perseverance

Main Job: Seek signs of ancient life and collect samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and soil) for return to Earth.

Launch: July 30, 2020    

Landing: Feb. 18, 2021, Jezero Crater, Mars

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

For more about Perseverance: 

science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/

For more information on NASA's Mars missions, visit: mars.nasa.gov

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Duration: 1 minute
Release Date: Jan. 30, 2026

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