English: Mars Perseverance Rover - Intriguing Rocks - April 27, 2021

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover viewed these rocks using its Mastcam-Z imager on April 27, 2021, the 66th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Stitched together from 21 images, this mosaic is not white balanced; instead, it is displayed in a preliminary calibrated version of a natural-color composite, approximately simulating the colors of the scene as it would appear on Mars.

For scale, the largest piece of rock casting a shadow in the upper right part of the mosaic is about 11 inches (27 centimeters) across, and the entire scene is about 10 feet (3 meters) across. The smallest pebbles and other features that can reliably be resolved at this zoom scale are around 0.04 to 0.08 inches (1-2 millimeters) across.

The scene was also captured in enhanced color (Figure 1) as well as a color anaglyph made for viewing through red-blue 3D glasses (Figure 2).

Arizona State University in Tempe leads the operations of the Mastcam-Z instrument, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego.