NASA released new images from Mars on Friday, some taken by the Perseverance rover once it landed at an ideal spot on the Jezero Crater near boulders estimated to be up to 3.8 billion years old.
One high-definition color image shows the rover dangling from three bridle lines just before contact with the Martian surface on Thursday. Another shows the first high-res color image taken from a camera on the underside of the rover, with its own shadow clearly seen. A third clearly shows an aluminum wheel of the rover.
The images captured a picture-perfect landing that took less than a day to process given the time for data to travel the 140-million-mile distance from Earth. NASA expects to process more images and even a movie with sound by Monday.
The landing alone was an “epic effort” that took eight years of preparation and 4,000 human years of work by hundreds of engineers and scientists, said Adam Steltzner, chief engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory during an online news briefing.
“It’s a huge human lift to make that happen,” he said. The images “really pull us humans on Earth into the result of that hard work.”
The landing location was carefully calculated with the assistance of onboard cameras to avoid rocks and other features, placing the rover on a slight 1-degree slope that will make it easy to move about for research. The rover sits just two kilometers from a delta feature and a geologic contact between major rock bodies where rocks have already seen with holes, or bugs, meaning they could be sedimentary or volcanic. Further study will be required to decide, said Katie Stack Morgan, deputy project scientist for Mars 2020 at NASA.
Perseverance will be able to drill and collect rock samples that will eventually be returned to Earth for study into evidence of ancient microbial life.
It might be a month to two months before the Ingenuity drone helicopter attached to the rover gets its trial run, NASA officials said. Once the rover is fully operational, scientists will use high-res images to help find an ideal helipad location. The rover will then drop Ingenuity to the ground and drive off, leaving the heli to prepare for its first short, possibly followed by four more.
The rover will have a weather station aboard through a MEDA project, which will help the lightweight helicopter navigate to avoid sudden gusts and dust.
NASA will soon upgrade its surface software to make the rover fully operational over a four-step process. The upgrade will first be tested on a backup computer and then the primary one. The process will move the rover over to surface software and away from flight software used in the landing process.
Late Friday, pyrotechnic charged will fire to release the rover’s mast from where it is fixed on the rover’s deck. On Saturday, the mast will be raised to allow cameras to take panoramas of the rover’s deck and surroundings.
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