The pictures also provide insight into where the rover could best hunt for samples, including those that may contain signs of past life, known as biosignatures.
Billions of years ago, when Mars had an atmosphere thick enough to support water flowing across its surface, river flows carried sand and gravel from the surrounding highlands towards Jezero’s fan-shaped river delta.
The lake in the crater – Lake Jezero – could have been up to 40km wide and tens of metres deep, researchers believe. They hope the findings could help Perseverance achieve its scientific missions of finding signs of former life and collecting samples for future return to Earth.
Soon after landing in February this year, the rover’s Mastcam-Z cameras and Remote Micro-Imager (RMI) zoomed in for a closer look at one of the crater’s most massive geological features, the ‘Delta Scarp’.
The scarp contains the remnants of a river delta that formed where a 120-mile-long ancient river and a...