Perseverance caught a hauntingly beautiful glimpse of Mars’ tiny moon Deimos rising in the pre-dawn sky, using a long-exposure shot stitched from 16 images.
At 4:27 a.m. local time on March 1, 2025, NASA’s Perseverance rover captured a striking view of Deimos, the smaller of Mars’ two moons, glowing faintly in the pre-dawn sky. It was the rover’s 1,433rd day on Mars, and the moment unfolded in near-total darkness.
To create the image, Perseverance used its left navigation camera to take 16 long-exposure photos, each lasting 3.28 seconds. These were then combined into a single image right onboard the rover, before being sent back to Earth. Altogether, the final photo represents a 52-second exposure.
Because of the low light conditions, the image contains a soft haze and digital noise. Many of the white specks scattered across the sky are likely artifacts from the camera, though a few could be cosmic rays. Two of the brightest points in the image are real stars, Regulus and Algieba, both members of the constellation Leo.
“Woodstock Crater,” at center right, is roughly a half-mile (750 meters) away from the rover. At the time, Perseverance was making its way to a location called “Witch Hazel Hill.”
Deimos is the smaller and more distant of Mars’ two moons, the other being Phobos. Discovered in 1877 by American astronomer Asaph Hall, Deimos is only about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) wide, making it one of the smallest moons in the solar system.
Shaped like a lumpy, irregular rock, Deimos looks more like an asteroid than a traditional moon. Scientists believe it may have originally been an asteroid captured by Mars’ gravity. It orbits about 23,500 kilometers (14,600 miles) above the Martian surface and takes roughly 30 hours to complete a full orbit.
NASA’s Perseverance rover, part of the Mars 2020 mission, is a groundbreaking robotic explorer designed to advance the search for life on Mars and lay the groundwork for future human missions. A primary goal of Perseverance is astrobiology—specifically, the search for signs of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet. To achieve this, the rover is studying Mars’ geology and past climate, helping scientists understand the planet’s history and potential habitability.
Perseverance is the first mission to collect and cache samples of Martian rock and soil (regolith), storing them in sealed containers. These samples are intended for eventual retrieval and return to Earth by NASA’s Mars Sample Return Program, a collaborative effort with the European Space Agency (ESA) that will enable unprecedented laboratory analysis.
This mission is a central part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program and its broader Moon to Mars strategy, which includes the Artemis missions to the Moon as stepping stones toward future human exploration of Mars.
The rover was built and is operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California.
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