Two rectangular black images.  One has a relief map pattern with a circle removed and one has the removed circle with the same relief pattern.

February 26, 2021

This illustration depicts artwork that is etched on two anodized aluminum plates that form a pair. The plates represent the effort to “bring back a piece of Mars,” via the Mars Sample Return effort. The Mars Perseverance rover will collect and cache Mars samples in Jezero Crater, as the first leg of a multi-mission effort. A future mission would land at Jezero and retrieve the samples for return to Earth.

The plate on the left was attached to Perseverance and sent to Mars, while the plate on the right remains on Earth at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The delicate lines etched on both of the plates represent a digital elevation model, created from orbital data of Jezero Crater.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California built and manages operations of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover for NASA.

For more information about the mission, go to: mars.nasa.gov/mars2020.

Credits

NASA/JPL-Caltech

ENLARGE

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