NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover sends image of descent stage's crash on Mars
After the descent stage safely delivered the Mars rover, it flew away from the landing site and realized its carefully planned destiny. Perseverance caught the crash on camera.
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The higher-contrast part of the image shows the plume where the descent stage crashed.
NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover has provided a new image from the red planet, showing a plume of smoke from where its descent stage made surface impact with Mars. One of the rover's Hazcams captured the image, Perseverance tweeted Wednesday.
"A moment of respect for the descent stage," Perseverance tweeted. "Within two minutes of safely delivering me to the surface of Mars, I caught the smoke plume on one of my Hazcams from its intentional surface impact -- an act that protected me and the scientific integrity of my landing site."
Read more: NASA Perseverance Rover explores Mars: Everything you need to know
You can check out a video of the rover being lowered from the descent stage onto the rocky planet here. Perseverance has already sent back sounds from Mars and shown off a panorama of the red planet.
Perseverance is set to look for signs of ancient microbial life; collect dust and rock samples: test a helicopter; and study Mars' climate and geology.
