The first high-resolution panorama that the Perseverance Mars rover‘s landing site provides a remarkably detailed picture of it Crater lake, including the jagged crater rim in the distance and low cliffs that mark the edge of an ancient river delta.
The panorama consists of 142 images captured by the Mastcam-Z camera instrument over the weekend, three days after the rover’s dramatic landing.
Click on the image below to zoom in and explore the landscape.
The zoomable, dual camera system is mounted on a remote sensing mast and can rotate 360 degrees for panoramic color and 3D images. It is able to detect something as small as a house fly along the length of a football field.
“I’m recording it all,” the rover’s Twitter account reported Wednesday. “This is the first 360-degree view of my house with Mastcam-Z.”
Persistence landed last Thursday in a crater that once contained a body of water the size of Lake Tahoe. Billions of years ago, water entered the crater through a channel that cut through the rim of the crater, depositing sediments in a wide delta as it filled the crater to a depth of hundreds of meters.
The water disappeared about three billion years ago, but the sediments may contain preserved remnants of ancient microbial life. Perseverance is designed to collect promising rock and soil samples that will be deposited on the surface later this decade to be retrieved by another rover. The samples will then be launched into orbit to be captured by a European spacecraft that will bring them back to Earth for detailed analysis.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU / MSSS
The Mastcam-Z panorama overlooks the bottom of the crater, showing Jezero’s steep ridge in the distance and eroded cliffs that mark the edge of the delta formation. Nearby abrasions where rocket exhaust plumes hit the surface Persistence was reduced until landing by its “sky crane” jetpack.
“We’re in the middle of a good spot where you can see several features that are in many ways similar to features that (the earlier rovers) Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity found at their landing sites,” said Arizona State lead researcher Jim Bell. University. ASU operates Mastcam-Z in conjunction with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU / MSSS
One of the goals of the first imaging campaign is to identify relatively flat, boulder-free areas where a small helicopter, still attached to the abdomen of the rover, can be dropped off for tests to determine if a flight in Mars’ thin atmosphere is achievable.
The first test flights are expected in about two months.