Perseverance has been on Mars for less than two months, and already the latest in red planet rovers has taken over some of Curiosity’s excellent habits.
No, not science; well, at least not only science. Percy is as adept as her predecessor at taking brilliant selfies, as evidenced by the most recently sent images.
As the rover settles into his new home in the Jezero crater, he sends back images of his surroundings, including parts of himself. We’re still waiting for a full-body photo, but on April 6, Perseverance took images of his ‘head’ and ‘face’ using the SHERLOC WATSON camera attached to his robotic arm.
“Oh hey … didn’t see you there …” (NASA / JPL-Caltech)
Officially, this is the mast on which cameras are mounted that the rover uses to image Mars.
The big round is the SuperCam, equipped with a laser and a spectrometer for analyzing rock samples; Below that, the two rectangular lenses are the Mastcam-Z, which creates high-definition color, 3D and panoramic images and video of Percy’s surroundings.
At the very bottom of the images, protruding from Percy’s ‘neck’ is the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer, which is equipped with sensors to track the weather on Mars – including the amount and particle size of the planet’s ubiquitous red dust.
Portrait of the artist as a young bot
WATSON digital image
Crater Lake, Mars, 2021 pic.twitter.com/Gtw81npIJB– NASA’s Persistence Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) April 6, 2021
The first weather report from MEDA has only just arrived the day after Percy landed on Mars, showing that the temperature in the crater was minus 20 degrees Celsius, dropping to minus 25.6 degrees Celsius within 30 minutes. At the same time, the atmosphere was also cleaner than the atmosphere in Gale Crater, the home of Curiosity.
(NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS)
Curiosity, meanwhile, is still disappearing and sending selfies itself. On March 26, it took a panoramic image of itself and the landscape around it, including a rock called Mont Mercou.
You can see from the image how dusty a rover can get after eight and a half years on Mars: Curiosity is covered in a layer of the stuff and it has accumulated on its chassis.
We’re not worried that curiosity – or persistence, for that matter – will go the way of Opportunity, which lost power after dust obscured the solar panels. Both curiosity and persistence are powered by plutonium’s radioactive decay, allowing them to survive even when ferocious dust storms circle the entire planet.
Sisters! Curiosity (left) and Percy (right). (NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS)
The next step for the Perseverance mission is the flight of Mars helicopter Ingenuity. Ingenuity broke away from Percy on April 3 and survived his first step – a freezing night on Mars, which can damage vulnerable parts.
The maiden flight is scheduled for sometime on or after April 11, after which NASA – starting around 3:30 a.m. EDT Monday, April 12 – will host a live stream to confirm the attempt. You can find information on what to look at on the NASA website.