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Nasa rover "Perseverance" sends high-resolution panorama photo to Earth - "These videos are incredible"

2021-02-26T11:05:16.139Z


The NASA rover “Perseverance” landed safely on Mars - and has now sent its first panorama photo to Earth.


The NASA rover “Perseverance” landed safely on Mars - and has now sent its first panorama photo to Earth.

Washington - On February 18, the NASA rover "Perseverance" landed on Mars.

After years of planning, the robot took off from the Cape Canaveral spaceport in July 2020 and landed safely after 203 days of flight and 472 million kilometers traveled.

Nasa rover "Perseverance": robot safely landed on Mars - "everything seems to be working fine"

The mission: The search for traces of past life on Mars and the study of the planet's climate and geology.

The conditions for life on the red planet seem to exist, which is why the US space agency Nasa is hoping to find it.

In the next few years "Perseverance" (German: Perseverance) will be active on Mars together with the ultra-light helicopter "Ingenuity" (ingenuity).

The first days of the mission are mainly about operational things, like adjusting the various programs.

On Friday, “Perseverance” sent its first status report to the control center in Pasadena, California.

"Everything seems to be working fine," said project manager Tim Canham.

Nasa rover "Perseverance": High-resolution 360-degree panorama of Mars reaches Earth

Immediately after landing, the first pictures from on site were eagerly awaited.

After the first photo still owed a lot in terms of image quality, as it was only taken with a makeshift camera, the rover has now sent a high-resolution panoramic image of Mars.

It is important for NASA because it can bring stones and sediments into focus, which may be of interest for further analysis.

Earlier Mars rovers had already sent panoramic images from Mars to Earth, but with less sophisticated cameras.

The so-called mast cams on one arm above the rover are said to be better than their predecessors, which is due, among other things, to a zoom function.

Nasa had already started five Mars missions, most recently in 2012 with the "Cuiosity" rover.

Nasa rover “Perseverance”: rubble, hills and an impact crater - panoramic image from Mars

The robot took the picture on Sunday by rotating a camera attached to a mast on its surface once through 360 degrees, NASA announced on Wednesday (local time).

A panorama image was then created from 142 photos that were taken in the process, with such a high resolution that details of only three to five millimeters near the rover and details of two to three meters further away are clearly visible.

In the photo you can mainly see scree and hills, which are surrounded by the horizon of the "Jezero Crater".

The “Jezero Crater” is a dry lake with a diameter of around 45 kilometers that has never been examined on site and that Perseverance is to investigate over the next two years.

That is why the Mars rover landed in the immediate vicinity of the crater on February 18.

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The image section of a stone shows how many details can be captured by the camera systems on board the US rover “Perseverance”.

© NASA / dpa

NASA rover "Perseverance": historical video and sound recordings inspire space agency

In addition to the panorama image, "Perseverance" also published spectacular video recordings and the first ever sound recordings from the surface of Mars.

Thanks to the special microphones on the rover, a noise could be heard that sounded like a kind of gust of wind.

"These videos are amazing," said NASA manager Mike Watkins.

"We all watched them many, many times over the weekend." Such video and sound recordings have never been made before, according to the US space agency. 

(as / dpa)

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2021-02-26

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