Mastcam-Z’s View of the Area Around ‘Brac’ in Mars’ Jezero Crater
| Credit | NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS |
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This panorama of a location called “Brac” was captured by the Mastcam-Z camera system aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover between Nov. 6 and Nov. 17, 2021, the 255th and 265th Martian days, or sols, of the mission. The panorama is made up of a total of 64 images stitched together after being sent back to Earth.
In addition to an enhanced-color version, the scene is available in natural color, as the eye would see it under Mars-like conditions (Figure 1) and as an anaglyph viewable with red-blue 3D glasses (Figure 2).
The images were taken while the rover was parked at an elevated spot to collect its first samples of rocks from the “South Séítah” geologic unit of Jezero Crater. Visible are the rock outcrops “Caille” and “Cheiron,” which have layers that range from being several centimeters thick to some that are tens of centimeters thick. The layering initially led the rover’s science team to believe that these were either sedimentary rocks or rocks made of volcanic particles that dropped there after an eruption.
In the bottom center of the composite image, or mosaic, is where Perseverance abraded a rock target called “Dourbes”; the white areas represent tailings from the abrasion. After the Mastcam-Z imager took the mosaic, Perseverence drilled and collected two cores – called “Salette” and “Coulettes” – from either side of the abrasion patch.
The Mastcam-Z investigation is led and operated by Arizona State University in Tempe, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, California, on the design, fabrication, testing, and operation of the cameras, and in collaboration with the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen on the design, fabrication, and testing of the calibration targets.
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.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more about Perseverance:
