NASA's Perseverance rover captures stunning vista of Jezero Crater on Mars: See photo

NASA's Perseverance rover recently paused on a lengthy climb to look back upon the vast crater where it landed more than three years ago to begin scouring Mars for signs that the planet was once habitable.

The images the robot captured late in September from high above the Jezero Crater presents a striking vista of a sparse, rocky landscape marked by the rover's winding tracks as it slowly makes its way out at the western rim. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Monday released a stunning mosaic of the imagery that paints a detailed picture of an area of the Red Planet that Perseverance has thoroughly explored.

"The image not only shows our past and present, but also shows the biggest challenge to getting where we want to be in the future,” Rick Welch, Perseverance’s deputy project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement.

The rover has so far spent about two months negotiating a steep route out of the Jezero Crater with the aim of cresting the rim in early December to continue its hunt for more clues about past life on Mars, according to NASA.

'Zebra rock:' NASA's Perseverance rover found an unusual stone on Mars

NASA combines 44 Perseverance frames into stunning vista of Jezero Crater

The Perseverance rover has spent more than three years on Mars after a 200-day, 300-million-mile journey between from July 2020 to February 2021 to reach the Red Planet. The craft's landing site was the bottom of Jezero Crater, where it has spent the ensuing years scouring the area's rocks and soil for evidence that life once existed on Mars.

Late in August, Perseverance began a slow ascent to the top of the crater, which scientists believe was once flooded with water.

At roughly the halfway point, the rover stopped Sept. 27 to use its Mastcam-Z cameras high on the rover's mast to capture a series of images of its famed landing site. Stitched together from 44 frames, the composite image that NASA pieced together includes not only the rover's Feb. 18, 20221 landing site, but many other landmark locations that have come to define the Perseverance mission.

That includes the spot where Perseverance first found sedimentary rocks in 2022 and the location of the first depot on another planet where NASA and the European Space Agency can one day retrieve the rover's collected samples. The mosaic image also shows where the Ingenuity Mars helicopter completed its final flight in January – a location Perseverance imaged in February.

Visible on the right side of the image is a slope of about 20 degrees that Perseverance is still traversing. While Perseverance and its predecessors, Curiosity and Opportunity, have all climbed 20-degree inclines before, NASA said this is the first time one of its rovers traveled that steep a grade on such a slippery surface.

“Mars didn’t want to make it easy for anyone to get to the top of this ridge," Welch said.

Perseverance to continue exploration of Mars

Before the year is out, Perseverance is expected to summit the Jezero Crater and begin a quarter-mile drive to another area where orbital data shows is rife with light-toned, layered bedrock.

Already, the Perseverance team operating the rover from southern California have found signs of unusual geology.

Late last month, Perseverance happened upon a strange, striped rock the agency calls the "zebra rock" that is theorized to have rolled downhill. Because the rock was unlike anything yet encountered on Mars, the team had expressed hope that its discovery is a sign of things to come.

The team also hopes to compare findings at the new site to an area where Perseverance in July discovered and sampled another unusual Martian rock nicknamed "Cheyava Falls" after a waterfall in the Grand Canyon. The rock, ringed with black and marked by distinctive white veins and dozens of tiny bright spots, was discovered as Perseverance explored a quarter-mile-wide valley called Neretva Vallis.

Because Cheyava Falls has chemical markings that could be the trace of life forms that existed when water ran freely through the area long ago, it offers compelling evidence that life once existed on Mars, NASA has said.

Perseverance’s research is intended to pave the way for humans to reach Mars in the years ahead under NASA's Artemis program, which will begin with astronauts returning to the moon to establish a base of operations. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has also expressed his vision of beginning uncrewed trips of his own to the Red Planet before humans reach it ? perhaps as early as 2028.

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: NASA's Perseverance captures stunning image of Mars crater: See photo