NASA's Perseverance rover is perpetually in motion, continually capturing intriguing images of the Martian landscape. During one of its recent snapshots, the intrepid robot seized a mesmerizingly otherworldly sunset, casting a uniquely cool blue glow upon the red planet's sky.
The image was shared by a Twitter handle named Mars Mission Images Bot with a caption that reads, "Perseverance Rover image taken on Sol842 at 5:04:58.610 PM with Navcam Mars NASA Space."
According to the science alert portal, the image is nothing like a sunset you will see here on Earth, and there's a good reason for that. Mars is further from the Sun than Earth, which means light on this nearby planetary body is not nearly as powerful; at most, it receives less than half of the sunlight that we do. The image also shows a circle in the centre of the sun.
Furthermore, Mars possesses just a fraction of Earth's atmospheric composition, primarily composed of carbon dioxide, with only minor quantities of nitrogen and trace amounts of oxygen.
According to the space agency, a key objective of Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterise the planet's geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA's Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
