New Mars image from rover landing site shows red planet in high definition

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The rover’s Mastcam-Z instrument, a pair of zoomable color cameras, returned 142 images from its landing site on February 21. NASA teams put them together to create the instrument’s first 360-degree panorama.

This is the first high-definition look at Jezero Crater, the site of a 3.9 billion-year-old dry lake bed where the rover will look for signs of ancient life over the next two years.

In the image, the crater rim and cliff of an ancient river delta can be seen in the distance. This is reminiscent of the images previously shared by NASA’s Curiosity rover on its Gale Crater exploration site.

“We’re tucked away in a great place, where you can see different features similar in many ways to the features Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity found on their landing sites,” said Jim Bell, Principal Investigator of the Mastcam Instrument. Z to Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, in a statement.

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Perseverance also returned a panorama using its Navcams, or navigation cameras, over the weekend.

Mastcam-Z is a new feature on Perseverance that builds on lessons learned from the Curiosity rover’s Mastcam instrument. Curiosity’s Mastcam has two cameras with a fixed focal length, while Mastcam-Z has a zoom capability.

These two cameras are like high-definition eyes on Perseverance as she shares her perspective with a team of scientists and engineers at home.

The rim of Jezero crater can be seen in the distance.

They sit on the mast of the rover, reaching eye level for someone who is just over 6.5 feet tall. The cameras are spaced 9.5 inches apart to allow stereo viewing.

The color imagery produced by Mastcam-Z looks a lot like the quality you’d expect from your own HD digital camera, NASA officials said. These cameras can not only zoom but also focus to capture videos, panoramas and 3D images.

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This will allow scientists on the mission team to examine objects both near and far from the rover.

In the panorama, details as small as 0.1 to 0.2 inches in diameter can be seen if an object is near the rover, while those between 6.5 and 10 feet in diameter in the distance are also visible.

This wind-sculpted rock can be seen in the first 360-degree panorama taken by the Mastcam-Z instrument.

These capabilities will help the overall mission objectives both to understand the geological history of the crater and to identify the types of rock that the rover’s other instruments should study. The insights offered by Mastcam-Z will also help scientists determine which rocks they should take samples from and which will ultimately be returned to Earth by future missions.

The team working on the Mastcam-Z instrument will share more details about the panorama Thursday, February 25 at 4 p.m. ET on the NASA website and social media accounts.

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