Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

Check out Perseverance’s first panoramic image from Mars

By
NASA’S Perseverance Rover’s First 360 View of Mars (Official)

Following the release of some stunning video footage showing NASA’s Perseverance rover landing on Mars last week, the space agency has just posted the rover’s first panoramic view of the Martian surface.

Recommended Videos

Comprising six separate photos stitched together to make an explorable panorama, the imagery (top) was captured by Perseverance’s color Navigation Cameras — or Navcams — located on the rover’s remote sensing mast.

Related

The view shows Jezero Crater, where NASA’s car-sized explorer landed on Thursday, 18 February, at the end of a six-and-a-half-month journey from Earth. You can also see parts of the rover itself.

The landing was particularly tricky for a host of reasons, not least because Perseverance was coming down in an area with boulders and uneven terrain. But the location was carefully chosen as scientists believe the area inside the crater was once filled with water and therefore offers the best chance of finding evidence of ancient life.

“A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life,” NASA says in notes accompanying the video, adding, “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.”

Perseverance is kitted out with a total of 19 cameras — the most of any of the five Mars rovers that NASA has landed on the red planet up to now. Its Curiosity rover, which landed on the Martian surface in 2012, has already sent back plenty of impressive imagery, but with Perseverance carrying the latest camera technology, we can expect to see even more amazing pictures and videos over the course of NASA’s two-year mission.

Perseverance is currently undergoing an extensive check of its plethora of systems and instruments, and once everything is confirmed to be in proper working order it will set about exploring its new home.

We can also look forward to the appearance of Ingenuity, a small helicopter-like machine that’s set to become the first aircraft to fly on another planet. It’s currently attached to the rover’s underbelly but is expected to take flight in the coming months.

And if you haven’t already seen the incredible footage of the rover coming in to land last week, be sure to take a look.

“This video of Perseverance’s descent is the closest you can get to landing on Mars without putting on a pressure suit,” NASA’s Thomas Zurbuchen said following the video’s release on Monday.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
See the first image of Earth from a new weather-monitoring satellite
First image of the full Earth disc from the Meteosat Third Generation Imager. The first image from Meteosat Third Generation – Imager 1 (MTG-I1) reveals a level of detail about the weather over Europe and Africa not previously possible from 36 000 km above Earth. The higher-resolution images provided by the instruments on board give weather forecasters more information about the clouds cloaking much of Europe and visible in the equatorial region of Africa and the Atlantic Ocean. Sand and sediment in the waters off Italy are also visible, as well as dust or smog being carried from south Asia. This degree of detail is not possible from the instruments on the Meteosat Second Generation satellites. The image was captured at 11:50 UTC on 18 March 2023 by the Flexible Combined Imager on MTG-I1.

A recently launched weather satellite has sent back its first image of Earth, showing our planet in gorgeous detail. The European Meteosat Third Generation Imager-1 was launched in December of last year with the aim of monitoring weather conditions across Europe and Africa, and it took this image from its location 22,000 miles above the Earth's surface.

The image was taken using the high-resolution Flexible Combined Imager instrument in March 2023, showing the areas of cloud and clear skies that can be seen over the Atlantic Ocean, as well as the European and African land masses.

Read more
Ingenuity and Perseverance snap photos of each other on Mars
The Ingenuity helicopter on the surface of Mars, in an image taken by the Perseverance rover. Ingenuity recently made its 50th flight.

Everyone's favorite Mars double act, the Ingenuity helicopter and the Perseverance rover, have been traveling together recently after spending several months apart. As they explore the site of an ancient river delta in the Jezero crater, the pair have snapped images of each other that were recently shared by NASA.

The Perseverance's cameras caught this great shot of Ingenuity, which, as noted in the rover's Twitter post, is now considerably dustier than it was when it first deployed from under the rover's belly two years ago. In its two years on the red planet, Ingenuity has made more than 50 flights, which is incredible when you consider that it was designed to perform just five flights. During that time, Ingenuity had to take a break from long flights to deal with the cold martian winter, but since the beginning of the year, the helicopter has been back, making some of its longest flights yet.

Read more
Supermassive black hole spews out jet of matter in first-of-its-kind image
Scientists observing the compact radio core of M87 have discovered new details about the galaxy’s supermassive black hole. In this artist’s conception, the black hole’s massive jet is seen rising up from the centre of the black hole. The observations on which this illustration is based represent the first time that the jet and the black hole shadow have been imaged together, giving scientists new insights into how black holes can launch these powerful jets.

As well as pulling in anything which comes to close to them, black holes can occasionally expel matter at very high speeds. When clouds of dust and gas approach the event horizon of a black hole, some of it will fall inward, but some can be redirected outward in highly energetic bursts, resulting in dramatic jets of matter that shoot out at speeds approaching the speed of light. The jets can spread for thousands of light-years, with one jet emerging from each of the black hole's poles in a phenomenon thought to be related to the black hole's spin.

Scientists observing the compact radio core of M87 have discovered new details about the galaxy’s supermassive black hole. In this artist’s conception, the black hole’s massive jet of matter is seen rising up from the center of the black hole. The observations on which this illustration is based represent the first time that the jet and the black hole shadow have been imaged together, giving scientists new insights into how black holes can launch these powerful jets. S. Dagnello (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

Read more