Mars 'selfie' is amazing - as NASA prepares for human mission

Incredible new photographs released by NASA show a robot's 'selfie' from the surface of Mars . The space agency’s Perseverance rover took a self-portrait against a dramatic backdrop of ancient Martian terrain at the 'Lac de Charmes', a region on the western edge of Mars' Jezero Crater. Assembled from 61 individual images, the image shows Perseverance training its mast on a rocky outcrop on which it had just scraped a circle shape on, with the western rim of Jezero Crater stretching into the background. The selfie was captured on March 11, the 1,797th Martian day, or sol, of the mission, during the rover’s deepest push west beyond the crater. Perseverance is in its fifth campaign, known as the Northern Rim Campaign, of its mission on the Red Planet. The Lac de Charmes region represents some of the most challenging and scientifically rewarding terrain the rover has visited to date. Katie Stack Morgan, Perseverance’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said: “We took this image when the rover was in the ‘Wild West’ beyond the Jezero Crater rim — the farthest west we have been since we landed at Jezero a little over five years ago “We had just abraded and analysed the ‘Arethusa’ outcrop, and the rover was sitting in a spot that provided a great view of both the Jezero Rim and the local terrain outside of the crater.” A NASA crew recently completed the landmark Artemis II fly-by mission, marking the first time humanity has returned to the Moon in half a century. The capsule - which completed a 695,081-mile trip around the Moon - carried astronauts deeper into space than humans have ever travelled before, before splashing down off the coast of Florida. Aside from a malfunctioning toilet, the capsule appeared to perform well during the nearly 10-day voyage, according to NASA. The landmark mission will be followed in the next couple of years by Artemis III and Artemis IV lunar landing missions, which will live-test life support systems, spacesuits, and surface habitats required for Mars. NASA's first-ever human landing on Mars is currently planned for the mid-2030s, while China's National Space Administration and Elon Musk's SpaceX also announced separate missions.