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Otherworldly photos of Mars’ new robotic resident continue to pour in.
From NASA Perseverance rover, which landed inside the 45km-wide Jezero Crater on February 18, captured cute snaps of its own shadow over the weekend with its hazard avoidance cameras.
Ken Kremer of Space UpClose sewn two of these images into a striking mosaic which shows the contours of the rover and the stony terrain it has just started to explore.
Related: Photos of NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover mission to the Red Planet
Perseverance is the centerpiece of the $ 2.7 billion Mars 2020 mission, which will search for signs of ancient life on Jezero’s soil and collect and cache dozens of samples for future return to Earth. The car-sized rover picks up speed; the instrument checks are going well and the robot has made its first trips on the surface of the red planet.
Perseverance has covered about 70 meters on Mars so far, mission team members said via Twitter on Monday evening (8 March). Its last trip served to spot a potential flight zone for Ingenuity, the 4 lb. (1.8 kilograms) helicopter that flew to the red planet on the belly of Perseverance.
Upholding ingenuity is the first big agenda for the March 2020 mission. Once the small helicopter completes its technology demonstration flights, Perseverance will begin its science and sample collection work in earnest, said officials. rover team members.
The Mars 2020 team makes all Perseverance photos accessible to the public here. As of Monday evening, there were 8,802 images to admire, including high-resolution 360-degree panoramas of the area near the landing site, which was recently named after famous sci-fi author Octavia Butlerand great shots of the rover’s spectacular Sky Crane touchdown.
Mike Wall is the author of “Over there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book on the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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