It is the first step towards a future in which a virtual walk on Mars could be within the reach of anyone with a 3D viewer and access to stereoscopic images sent from the planet: it is probably this taste of the future that strikes the most in the breathtaking video sent by the NASA's Perseverance rover during its descent to Martian soil.
From the heat shield that protected him as he crossed the Martian atmosphere to the breathtaking panorama of the Jazero crater, the rover sent extraordinary images and the result was the first high-definition, stereoscopic video ever shot on another planet.
"Forget science fiction films: all this is much more exciting", commented astronaut Luca Parmitano in a tweet.
It is only the beginning of what could become the 'Martian chronicles' never seen before.
For many years the vehicles in the orbit of Mars have been giving us images that have allowed us to build ever more precise maps of the red planet, the radars have discovered hidden seas under the surface and the rovers that have landed on the ground have introduced us to the Martian sunsets, but with the arrival of Perseverance many things could change.
In the meantime, because the new NASA rover is equipped with 19 cameras which, together with those of the descent module, have captured more than 23,000 images for a total of over 30 gigabytes: from all this material the video of the " seven minutes of terror ", as NASA calls the time it takes for the descent through the Martian atmosphere to the ground.
It is enough to begin to imagine a future that could make Mars much more familiar, perhaps with the possibility of immersing oneself in its panoramas thanks to the combination of images taken by rovers with virtual reality.
"At this point in my career it is unlikely to fly a spacecraft that descends to Mars, but - said the deputy director of the Perseverance program, Matt Wallace - looking at these images you can get a taste of what it would be like to land in Jezero crater ".
"We have never sent humans to Mars yet, it is not around the corner, but we are sending many robotic probes that have cameras so sophisticated that they can shoot high resolution", observes the astronomer Amedeo Balbi, of the University. of Rome Tor Vergata.
"In the case of Perseverace - he continues - they are stereoscopic cameras, with which you can build 3D images. That is to say that using the helmets for virtual reality that are used for video games you can find yourself in an immersive situation that allows to see a Martian landscape as if you were there ".
Thanks to this technology, he concludes, sooner or later we could all try to walk on Mars.
