Written by Athanasios Klidaras, Ph.D. candidate at Purdue College, and Megan Kennedy Wu, Senior Mission Operations Specialist at Malin Area Science Methods
To have a good time her 1,500th Martian day (“Sol”) exploring the purple planet, the Perseverance rover used its robotic arm to take a selfie of the rover and the encircling panorama. However when group members reviewed the picture, they have been stunned to search out that Perseverance had been photobombed!
Because the rover sat on the “Pine Pond” workspace, situated on the outer rim of Jezero crater, which it has been exploring for the previous a number of months, the Broad Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering (WATSON) digital camera on the tip of its arm was used to accumulate a 59-image mosaic of the rover. That is the fifth “selfie” that Perseverance has acquired since touchdown on Mars in 2021. The rover’s robotic arm will not be seen within the self portrait as a result of — similar to a selfie you’d take with your individual cellphone digital camera — rover operators be sure to not have the arm get “in the best way” of the physique of the rover. That is even simpler to do on Mars as a result of Perseverance must take 59 completely different photographs at barely completely different arm positions to construct up the selfie, and the elbow of the robotic arm is saved out of the best way whereas the pictures are acquired. You could find extra particulars about the Sol 1500 selfie here, and this YouTube video reveals how the rover arm strikes when these actions happen.
Whereas snapping away, Perseverance was photobombed by a dust devil in the distance! These are comparatively frequent phenomena each on Mars and in Earth’s desert areas, and kind from rising and rotating columns of heat air, which supplies the looks of a mud twister. Identical to many different climate patterns, there’s a peak “season” for dust-devil exercise, and Jezero crater is within the peak of that season now (late northern spring). The one seen within the selfie is pretty massive, about 100 meters, or 328 ft, throughout. Whereas Perseverance recurrently displays the horizon for dust-devil exercise with Navcam films, that is the primary time the WATSON digital camera on the tip of the robotic arm has ever captured a picture of a mud satan!
The darkish gap in entrance of the rover, surrounded by grey rock powder created through the drilling course of, reveals the placement of Perseverance’s 26th pattern. Nicknamed “Bell Island” after an island close to Newfoundland, Canada, this rock pattern comprises small spherules, thought to have fashioned by volcanic eruptions or impacts early in Martian historical past. Later, this historic rock was uplifted through the affect that fashioned Jezero crater. Now that the rover has efficiently acquired the spherule pattern the science group was looking for, Perseverance is leaving the world to discover new rock exposures. Final week, the rover arrived at an publicity of light-toned bedrock referred to as “Copper Cove,” and the science group was to find out if this unit underlies or overlies the rock sequence explored earlier. After performing an abrasion to get a better take a look at the chemistry and textures, the rover drove south to scout out extra websites alongside the outer fringe of the Jezero crater rim.