NASA’s Perseverance, Curiosity Panoramas Capture Two Sides of Mars

5 min readNASA’s Perseverance, Curiosity Panoramas Capture Two Sides of MarsJet Propulsion LaboratoryApr 27, 2026 Article Contents Driven by Curiosity Persevering for science Learn how NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance Mars rovers are exploring different chapters of the Red Planet’s ancient history. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/ESA/University of Arizona/JHUAPL/USGS Astrogeology Science Center NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have captured two 360-degree landscapes that highlight how the missions are revealing details of the Red Planet’s formation, watery past, and potential for life. Located 2,345 miles (3,775 kilometers) apart from each other on Mars — about the distance from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. — both rovers are exploring areas that are billions of years old. But as the nearly 15-year-old Curiosity reaches ever-younger terrain in the foothills of Mount Sharp, the 5-year-old Perseverance is venturing into some of the oldest landscapes in the entire solar system. By time-traveling in opposite directions, the rovers are filling in missing details about the planet’s history. Stitched together from 1,031 images taken between Nov. 9 and Dec. 7, 2025, Curiosity’s 360-degree panorama offers a detailed look into a region filled with a vast network of boxwork formations: Resembling giant spiderwebs in orbiter images, the low ridges were created by groundwater that once flowed through large fractures in the bedrock. The minerals left behind hardened the rock along the fractures, resulting in erosion-resistant ridges. Perseverance’s panorama focuses on a place nicknamed “Lac de Charmes,” which sits outside the rim of Jezero Crater. Taken between Dec. 18, 2025, and Jan. 25, 2026, 980 images were stitched together for a 360-degree view capturing the Jezero rim and ancient rocks around the crater. Driven by Curiosity Today, both of these landscapes are frigid deserts, but evidence of a more dynamic past hides within. When Curiosity landed on the floor of Gale Crater in 2012, it set out to determine whether Mars once had the conditions to support life. Within a year, a sample drilled from an ancient lakebed confirmed those conditions had been present, including the right chemistry and potential nutrients for microbes. NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this 360-degree view of a region filled with low ridges called boxwork formations between Nov. 9 and Dec. 7, 2025. At 1.5 billion pixels, this is one of the largest panoramas Curiosity has ever taken. Since 2014, Curiosity has been ascending Mount Sharp. Towering 3 miles (5 kilometers) above the crater floor, the mountain first began forming when layers of sediment were deposited in a series of lakes. Long after those lakes dried up, ponds and streams returned several times, leaving a record in the mountain’s layers that formed in drier eras. Because the lowest layers are oldest and higher layers are youngest, Curiosity is essentially progressing back through geological time as it slowly climbs the mountain. Last year, Curiosity’s team documented how they found that the mineral siderite might be storing carbon dioxide that once was part of a thicker, early atmosphere. Scientists had long suspected that carbonate minerals such as siderite formed when carbon dioxide dissolved into ancient lakes, but such deposits had only rarely been found. The mission also announced the detection of three of the largest organic molecules ever found on Mars in a sample it had drilled in 2013.…

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