NASA’s Perseverance rover has captured a striking new selfie on the surface of Mars—featuring a rare and unexpected guest: a dust devil swirling in the distance.
Visible about 3 miles (5 kilometers) behind the rover, the faint, spiral-shaped dust devil appears in a composite image made from 59 individual photos taken by the camera mounted on Perseverance’s robotic arm. The image was released by NASA on Wednesday.
“It took an hour to perform all the arm movements necessary to gather the images, but it’s worth it,” said Megan Wu, an imaging scientist at Malin Space Science Systems, which developed the rover’s camera. “Having the dust devil in the background makes it a classic.”
The photo also marks a major milestone for Perseverance—1,500 sols (Martian days) on the Red Planet, equivalent to 1,541 Earth days since its landing in February 2021.
The image highlights the rover’s dust-covered frame, bearing the marks of its ongoing mission, which includes drilling into dozens of Martian rocks. Since its launch in 2020, Perseverance has been exploring Jezero Crater, a dried-up lakebed and ancient river delta believed to hold signs of past microbial life. The rover is collecting rock and soil samples that NASA plans to retrieve during a future mission.
