Perseverance arrives at Three Forks at the base of Jezero Crater’s delta – Behind The Black – Robert Zimmerman

Cool image time! The panorama above was created from four navigation camera images taken by the Mars rover Perseverance on April 10th. Because the lens on Perseverance’s navigation cameras produce slightly curved images which are taken in pairs, the panorama is made of two parts, each a pair perfectly matched images looking from a different angle. I have overlapped the pairs but as you can see, the match at the center is imperfect. While this does not produce a single smooth image, the two paired panoramas show the foot of the entire delta that had flowed into Jezero crater in the past and is the prime geological target of the rover. What is it made of? What caused it to flow into the crater? When did it do it? How was Mars different when it did so? Was the crater wet? Was the delta mud when it flowed, or was it sediment under water, pushed out by that flowing water?…