USA TODAY International Edition
Mars rover’s selfie among ‘ stunning’ photographs
After a seven- month, 300- millionmile journey to the Red Planet, NASA’s Perseverance rover has sent back the first high- definition color pictures of Mars, including a selfie.
On Friday, NASA released a photo of the rover in mid- descent as it was suspended under the sky crane moments before it touched down on Mars.
“This is something that we’ve never seen before. It was stunning. The team was awestruck. Just a feeling of victory that we were able to capture these,” said Aaron Stehura, one of the leads on the entry, landing and descent team.
Two more images taken with a 20megapixel camera show a wide shot of the landscape and a close- up of the rover’s front right wheel with rocks nearby. These are the first color images from the surface of Mars.
“Both images the team just went crazy for,” said Pauline Hwang, assistant strategic mission manager.
Perseverance’s primary mission is to search for microbial signs of life and its landing spot in Jezero Crater was handpicked for that goal. It’s an ancient river delta that is marked by steep cliffs, sand dunes and large boulders.
Perseverance touched down in a safe, flat spot with only 1 degree of tilt.
The team is putting Perseverance through its paces performing hardware check- outs to make sure all the systems are functioning.
In 10 days or less Perseverance could be ready for its first short drive to scope out the neighborhood.
The rover is decked out with 23 cameras and on Saturday the team was to do a full Martian photo shoot.
“We’re gonna do a panorama of the rover and we’re also going to do a full panorama of our landscape around us,” Hwang said.
They anticipated receiving those images by Monday.
Previous Mars missions have taken still photographs of descent but no landing had ever been filmed.
Six cameras were rolling high- definition video footage of the spacecraft during entry, landing and descent also known as the “seven minutes of terror” because pulling it off is a major challenge.
If they were successful it will be the first video footage of a spacecraft landing on another planet.
The landing team is hopeful it will begin to see video on Monday as well.
Perseverance also is equipped with two microphones to capture sound on the Red Planet for the first time. The team was hoping to get an indication over the weekend that they did get audio.
Perseverance did not travel solo to Mars. A helicopter called Ingenuity hitched a ride tucked under the belly of the rover. Ingenuity will attempt powered flight for the first time on another planet.
The team says the earliest they could begin helicopter flights would be in approximately two months.
First they have need to do checkouts on the rover’s surface flight software. Once that’s done, Perseverance needs to drive to the next location to find a safe spot for Ingenuity to fly. They’re calling it the “helipad location” and they might find it sooner than they anticipated.
“Based on where we landed we’re already starting to look at that data. There might be some really good helipad location nearby,” Hwang said.