NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover

Sol 1825 - 9-tile L-NavCam view of the workspace in front of Perseverance rover.

It was only a short drive of ~3 meters taking just over 7 minutes.

Full details of the drive and updated map are in the comments to this post

The drive was 105.42 meters northwest (full details below)

The drive path is highlighted in yellow in this screen capture of the mission map

Traversing to new terrain (sol 1815) Left-side Tiled NavCam

Map shows both drives

a 9-tile post drive NavCam of the new workspace

An engineer works on attaching NASA's Mars Helicopter to the belly of the Mars 2020 rover (which has been flipped over for that purpose) on August 28, 2019, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The twin-rotor, solar-powered helicopter was mechanically connected, along with the Mars Helicopter Delivery System, to a plate on the rover's belly that includes a cover to shield the helicopter from debris during entry, descent and landing.

This data is extracted from JPL's M2020 mission data that they update shortly after each drive.

4-tile post-drive NavCam Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This photo was selected by public vote and featured as "Image of the Week" for Week 262 (February 15 - 21, 2026) of the Perseverance rover mission on Mars.

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image using its Right Mastcam-Z camera. Mastcam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rover's mast.

This image was acquired on February 20, 2026 (Sol 1779) at the local mean solar time of 11:25:08.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

There is no GPS at the Red Planet, but a new technology called Mars Global Localization lets Perseverance determine precisely where it is — without human help.

Imagine you’re all alone, driving along in a rocky, unforgiving desert with no roads, no map, no GPS, and no more than one phone call a day for someone to inform you exactly where you are. That’s what NASA’s Perseverance rover has been experiencing since landing on Mars five years ago. Though it carries time-tested tools for determining its general location, the rover has needed operators on Earth to tell it precisely where it is — until now.

A new technology developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California enables Perseverance to figure out its whereabouts without calling humans for help. Dubbed Mars Global Localization, the technology features an algorithm that rapidly compares panoramic images from the rover’s navigation cameras with onboard orbital terrain maps. Running on a powerful processor that Perseverance originally used to communicate with the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, the algorithm takes about two minutes to pinpoint the rover’s location within some 10 inches (25 centimeters). Mars Global Localization was first used successfully in regular mission operations on Feb. 2, then again Feb. 16.

Further post-drive info for mission context

Updated maps of Percy’s whereabouts as of this sol below. The outer rim of Jezero Crater is to the right.

The sites of the two most recent rock abrasions, #50 and #51, are labelled (red boxes) above.

In the higher-resolution view above, local features are visible, such as the field of mega-ripples to the rover's northeast, two small craters with dark sandy floors to the east, and the "bench" of lighter-toned, flat, fractured bedrock now below the rover's wheels.

For context:

A number of quartz-rich "white rocks" have been found by Percy since late 2024, and this may be the latest example.

Quartz is not uncommon on Mars - it's a component of the volcanic rock you'd expect to find almost anywhere on Mars - but it has been quite rare to find it in isolation on this planet, making up all or most of a rock. Some of the latest published research proposes that these white rocks were left behind after the hot water of a hydrothermal system flowed through this crater rim area, which is definitely plausible, given all the other water-altered minerals we've found in the region.

Of course, you're probably not going to read this preamble anyway, and the unscientific comments will begin to flow shortly. So let me just say here and now that Martian sandworms are disgusting creatures, leaving garbage like this behind. Shoot them on sight, Percy!

Further post-drive info for mission context

Updated maps of Percy’s whereabouts as of this sol below. The outer rim of Jezero Crater is to the right. The sites of the two most recent rock abrasions, #50 and #51, are labelled in the first. The rover’s current position is marked with a cross. The second image is a higher-resolution view of the rover's immediate environs.

Further post-drive info for mission context

Updated map of Percy’s whereabouts as of this sol below. The outer rim of Jezero Crater is to the right. The sites of the two most recent rock abrasions, #50 and #51, are labelled. The rover’s current position is marked with a cross:

The first three rovers on Mars were powered by the Sun but the next two were too big and power hungry for that, so they use a power source like on the first Mars landers. Here’s how red-hot pellets of plutonium power Curiosity and Perseverance.

Ingenuity helicopter flew for a total of 2 hours, 8 minutes and 48 seconds over 1,004 days on Mars, flying more than 17 kilometers (11 miles) during its 72 flights.

Imaged here by one of the rover's MastCam-Z cameras (zoom set at 34mm). The photograph was captured during mission Sol 47 (April 7, 2021) shortly after deployment.

12 days after this image was taken JPL flew the helicopter for the first time during April 19, 2021

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

In this image, taken on June 1, 2019, an engineer in the Spacecraft Assembly Facility's High Bay 1 at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, can be seen working on the exposed belly of the Mars 2020 rover. It has been inverted to allow JPL's engineers and technicians easier access. The front of the rover is on camera left. The engineer is inspecting wiring directly above the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) instrument. MOXIE will demonstrate a way that future explorers might produce oxygen from the Martian atmosphere for propellant and for breathing.

In the foreground, just to the left of center and distinctive because of the relative lack of wiring, is the body unit for the SuperCam instrument. The mast unit for SuperCam instrument, which will provide imaging, chemical composition analysis, and mineralogy from its high perch at the top of the rover's remote sensing mast was installed June 25.

To the far left, covered by a red-colored shield, is the bay where the Adaptive Caching Assembly (ACA) will document, analyze and process for storage samples of Mars rock and soil for future return to Earth.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

How can you communicate with Mars spacecraft when the Sun is in the way? Learn more about 'solar conjunction' in this 60-second video.

TRANSCRIPT

About every two years, Earth and Mars wind up on opposite sides of the sun. Thatʼs called “solar conjunction.”

It's like being on either side of a huge bonfire: we canʼt see Mars, and our landers, rovers, and orbiters canʼt see us.

If our spacecraft send back signals, charged particles from the sun could interfere, causing gaps in the data that reach us.

Thatʼs not a big deal: if somethingʼs missing, it can always be resent later. But, no way do we want to lose data when we send up commands. Receiving a partial command could confuse the spacecraft, putting them in grave danger!

So, mission controllers plan ahead by sending up simple to-do lists, including regular health check ups.

Back home, this break in communications lets team members catch up on other work... or take a well-deserved vacation!

Solar conjunction lasts just a few weeks. Then itʼs back to the grindstone... on Earth and on Mars.