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The National Space Aeronautics Agency (NASA) Perseverance Rover that will land on Mars in February 2021 will have the most advanced pair of “eyes” ever sent to the surface of the Red Planet. The Mastcam-Z instrument to be mounted on the Perseverance Rover comes with advanced zoom capabilities that will help make 3D imaging easier for the mission.
Mastcam-Z [Z stands for zoom] It is an improved version of Mastcam that was used in the Curiosity Rover mission. The camera produced fantastic panoramic images but lacked zoom capabilities. The Curiosity Mastcam was initially designed to have zoom capabilities, however it was difficult to include the function in such a small instrument that Curiosity was launched in 2011.
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“The original plan was for Curiosity to have a zoom camera that could extend to extreme wide angle like a western view of spaghetti,” said Jim Bell of Arizona State University, principal investigator for Mastcam-Z and deputy principal investigator for Mastcam.
“It would have been an amazing panoramic perspective, but it was very difficult to build at the time,” added Bell.
Perseverance is a robotic scientist who weighs about 2,260 pounds (1,025 kilograms). The rover’s astrobiology mission will look for signs of past microbial life. It will characterize the planet’s climate and geology, collect samples for a future return to Earth, and pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet.
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The Rover is currently in final assembly and payment at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It will launch in July or August on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at the nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and is slated to land in Jezero Crater on Mars on February 18, 2021.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission is part of a larger program that includes missions to the Moon as a way to prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. Through its Artemis program, NASA intends to land the first woman and the next man on the lunar surface in 2024 and establish a sustained human presence on and around the Moon by 2028, using it as a springboard to send astronauts to Mars.
(With ANI inputs)
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