This image was acquired based on a hopeful scenario in which the Perseverance rover has an extended mission or two and travels outside of Jezero Crater to explore terrains to the west.

In this scenario, the decision could be made to land the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission here to pick up samples collected by Perseverance. MSR will probably not land here, but acquisition of a HiRISE stereo pair provides the data needed to assess the risk of landing. The cutout shows that there are diverse colors and textures, so this would be an interesting region to explore.

ID: ESP_072567_1990
date: 18 January 2022
altitude: 278 km

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_072567_1990
NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona
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