NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars in the Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021. The area is thought to have once been a lake bed that held water billions of years ago, making it a prime location to study the planet’s geological history. Equipped with advanced instruments, Perseverance is tasked with analyzing Martian rocks, soil, and the atmosphere of the red planet. It’s also collecting rock samples for a future collect and return mission to bring them back to Earth for analysis.
A view of the Jezero Crater from the Perseverance Rover on Mars (Credit : NASA)
It is equipped with a suite of 23 cameras, each serving a specific role in navigation, scientific analysis and engineering. Among them, Mastcam-Z is a powerful zoomable imaging system that captures high-resolution colour panoramas and 3D stereoscopic views of the Martian landscape. The SuperCam, mounted on the rover’s mast, not only takes detailed images but also uses lasers and spectroscopy to analyze the composition of rocks from a distance. Navigation and hazard avoidance are managed by cameras like Navcams and Hazcams, which help the rover safely traverse Mars’ rugged terrain. Finally the WATSON camera, located on the robotic arm, captures close-up images of rock textures and plays a key role in documenting sample collection and it is also often used to grab selfies of the rover.
Schematic showing cameras on the Perseverance Rover (Credit : NASA)
On May 10th, Perseverance used the WATSON camera to grab a selfie to mark its 1,500th day on Mars. NASA got a surprise though with an unexpected guest star in the image..a towering dust devil swirling in the distance photobombed the shot. The rover was on Witch Hazel Hill, an area on the rim of Jezero Crater that it has been exploring for the last 5 months.
To create a full selfie, the rover moves its arm through a series of carefully planned positions, snapping dozens of individual images from different angles. These photos are then stitched together into a seamless composite, showing the rover as if someone else took the picture. The selfie recently released was made up of 59 separate photos and took about an hour to capture due to all the complex arm movements required.
The image not only shows the rover in fine health albeit covered in a fine layer of Martian dust but it also shows a fresh bore hole drilled for sample collection. Perhaps the real star of the show though, was the dust devil 5km away in the background! The dust devils on Mars are just like those seen on Earth; towering, swirling columns of dust and wind that form when sunlight heats the surface creating warm air to rise and spin. They can reach heights of several kilometres and move across the surface leaving tracks in the fine red powdery surface material. They look dramatic and perhaps even scary but they are generally harmless and often help clean solar panels by blowing off accumulated dust.
Source : Devil's in Details in Selfie Taken by NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover
