NASA’s Perseverance rover will look at Mars through these eyes

When launched this summer, NASA’s Perseverance rover will have the most advanced pair of “eyes” ever sent to the surface of the red planet – its Mastcam-Z instrument includes a next-generation zoom capability that will aid the mission. to generate more 3-D images easily. Rover operators, who carefully plan each driving route and each movement of a rover’s robotic arm, view these stereo images through three-dimensional glasses to see the contours of the landscape.

Located at the “head” of Perseverance, Mastcam-Z (the Z stands for “zoom”) is a more advanced version of Mastcam, which NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has relied on to produce magnificent panoramas of the Martian landscape. But it does more than that, and Mastcam-Z will too: Along with producing images that allow the public to follow the rover’s daily discoveries, the cameras provide key data to help engineers navigate, and scientists choose interesting rocks to use. study. The difference is that the Curiosity Mastcam cannot zoom.

Zoom with a view

The Curiosity Mastcam was initially designed to be expandable, but was difficult to achieve at the time on such a small instrument (Curiosity was released in 2011).

“The original plan was for Curiosity to have a zoom camera that could extend to an extremely wide angle like a spaghetti western view,” said Jim Bell of Arizona State University, principal investigator for Mastcam-Z and principal investigator for Mastcam. . “It would have been an amazing panoramic perspective, but it was very difficult to build at the time.”

Instead, Curiosity’s Mastcam has a telephoto lens and a wide angle. Images are shot through each and can be combined to produce stereo views. But the wide-angle lens covers much more of the landscape in a single shot than the telescopic one; requires up to nine telescopic images to match.

Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z makes things simple by enlarging both lenses until they match and can be used to make a single 3-D image. This is easier and requires sending fewer images, and less data, to Earth.

Eyes of a scientist

In addition to providing a stereo view to help drivers choose the safest path, Mastcam-Z will help geologists choose scientific targets and better understand the landscape in which the rock samples are located: Did they fall from a neighboring cliff ? Are they from an old stream?

Mastcam-Z will provide “superhuman vision,” visualizing the landscape in a variety of colors (wavelengths of light), including some that the human eye cannot detect. Scanning the terrain in ultraviolet or infrared, for example, could reveal metallic meteorites that dot the surface or color variations that indicate compositions that require more detailed analysis by other instruments.

Mastcam-Z is not a spectrometer, that is, an instrument that uses light to perform detailed scientific analysis. “But it can provide mineral clues that other instruments will follow,” said Bell.

The camera system can also observe the Sun and sky, observing the transits of Mars’ moons through the Sun and measuring how dust storms and cloud formations change throughout the seasons.

Mars for the people

Bell’s first experience with the images of Mars was when he was 11 years old, watching images on the nightly television news sent by the Viking landers in 1976. Later he was involved in the Mars Pathfinder mission and led the Pancam systems on the Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which inspired a new generation of Mars fans, including future scientists and engineers.

The views that Perseverance will send from his landing site, Jezero Crater, will be just as important to those working on the mission and to everyone who follows him.

That’s why there are plans to share Mastcam-Z images and mosaics made by the amateur community on a public website. “It is important that the public have a sense of ownership,” said Bell. “Mastcam-Z images belong to all of us.”

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 the future return to Earth, and pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet. It doesn’t matter what day Perseverance starts during your July 17 to August 17. 5 launch period, will land in the Jezero crater of Mars on February 18, 2021.