Mastcam-Z

Mastcam-Z’s First 360° Panorama! (Sol 3)

[Note: The banner image here is a lower-resolution JPEG. For full-resolution versions of this Mastcam-Z mosaic, click on one of the red buttons below, and for additional versions of this panorama at full resolution, including 3-D anaglyphs for red/blue glasses and vertical projection views, visit the Mastcam Z’s 360° Panoramas Collection blog page…]

This mosaic was publicly released by JPL/NASA at https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA24264

This is the first 360-degree panorama taken by Mastcam-Z, a zoomable pair of cameras aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. The panorama was stitched together on Earth from 142 individual left camera 34-mm focal length images taken on Sol 3, the third Martian day of the mission (Feb. 21, 2021).

Arizona State University in Tempe leads the operations of the Mastcam-Z instrument, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego.

A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California built and manages operations of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover for NASA.

For more information about the mission, go to: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020

February 21, 2021

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