Clear skies on Mars – NASA rover captures one of the sharpest panoramas of the Red Planet ever taken

This is one of the sharpest, clearest panoramas you're ever likely to see captured from the surface of Mars.

It comes from NASA's Perseverance rover and gives us a real glimpse of what it might be like to walk across the surface of the Red Planet.

The image is a composite image, stitched together using a total of 96 different images captured by the Perseverance rover at a location known as 'Falbreen'.

Visible in the image are a rock that seems to be lying on top of a ripple of sand, a border line between two geologic units and views of hills 65km (40 miles) away.

NASA released two versions of the image.

One is an enhanced-colour version (above) that shows just how clear the Martian skies were when the image was taken.

The natural-colour version below reveals the true, rusty red colour of the planet's sky.

Perseverance rover's Mastcam-Z instrument captured the images on 26 May 2025.

Mastcam-Z is a high-tech camera system that's mounted on a mast on Perseverance and enables the rover to view – and zoom-in on – regions of interest on Mars.

It can even capture 3D images and video to enable scientists back on Earth to get clear views of the surface of the planet.

"The relatively dust-free skies provide a clear view of the surrounding terrain," says Jim Bell, Mastcam-Z’s principal investigator at Arizona State University in Tempe.

"And in this particular mosaic, we have enhanced the color contrast, which accentuates the differences in the terrain and sky."

What Perseverance captured in the image

There's lots to look at in the Perseverance image.

We can see a large rock on top of a dark, crescent-shaped sand ripple to the right of centre in the image. NASA says the rock was about 4.4 metres (14 feet) from the rover when the image was captured.

It's a 'float rock', much like Skull rock, so-called because it likely formed at one location, but was then transported to its different, current location by a natural process such as a landslide, water or wind.

NASA says it may have been deposited at the location in the image before the sand ripple formed.

Also visible is a bright white circle, left of centre and near the bottom, which is an abrasion patch.

The patch is 5cm (2 inches) wide and was made by Perseverance itself.

The rover drilled down into the Martian surface to enable the science team to get a closer look, before deciding to drill a core sample that will be stored in one of the rover's sample tubes.

Perseverance drilled the abrasion on 22 May 2025, then analysed the rocks and soil with its science instruments.

The Perseverance science team say Falbreen is of particular interest because it could be some of oldest terrain the rover has ever explored. It could even be older than Jezero Crater, which is the site of an ancient lake on Mars.

Also in the image, we can see the rover's tracks on the right, showing the route it took to reach the location.

About halfway up the mosaic, we can also see a boundary between lighter-toned and darker-toned rocks.

The flat, lighter-coloured rocks are rich in the mineral olivine, while darker rocks farther away are thought to be older clay-bearing rocks.