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NASA has released stunning new images from Perseverance, involving one of the rover gently lowered to the surface of Mars with a set of cables, the first time such a sight has been captured.
The high resolution was still taken from video taken at the descent stage of the spacecraft that had carried the rover from Earth.
At that time, the descent was using its six-engine jetpack to tow at a speed of about 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) per hour as part of the “moving skycrane man,” the final stage of landing.
“This is something we’ve never seen before,” said Aaron Stehura, deputy director for descendants and team to come on the mission, describing himself and his colleagues as a “surprise” when viewed them on the image first.
Adam Steltzner, chief engineer for the Sustainability project, said he immediately found the image, compared to the image of Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin standing on the moon in 1969, or the images of the astronomer Voyager 1 of Saturn in 1980.
“You can see the dust kicked by the rover’s engines,” he said, noting that the bullet was fired about two meters (six feet) or so above the ground.
Steltzner said the image helped viewers connect with a special moment representing years of work with thousands of people.
“You’re being taken to the surface of Mars. You’re sitting there, seven meters off the surface of the rover looking down,” he said. “It’s very moving, and it’s a real reminder of these other images from our experience as people moving out into our solar system. “
Another new image, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, captures Sustainability as it marches down through the atmosphere at hundreds of miles per hour.
Perseverance has also been able to upload the first tall color photo showing the flat area it landed in Crazer Jezero, where there was a deep river and lake billions of years ago.
A second image of color shows one of the rover’s six wheels, with several honeycombs estimated to be over 3.6 billion years old lying next to it.
“One of the questions we first ask is whether these rocks represent a volcanic or sedimentary origin,” said NASA project assistant scientist Katie Stack Morgan.
Volcanic rocks in particular can be extracted with very high precision once the samples are returned to Earth on a return trip in the future – an interesting development from a planetary science perspective.
As the first images came in, “it was interesting, the team went wild,” said mission operations system manager Pauline Hwang.
“The science team immediately started looking at those rocks and moving in and going, ‘What’s that!’ – it couldn’t be better.”
The first two images were released Thursday shortly after the rover landed, but were lower in resolution and in black-and-white due to the limited data available.
NASA hopes to get more high-resolution photos and videos in the coming days, but it is not yet known if it has recorded sound on Mars for the first time using microphones.
That could be known later in the weekend or early next week, Steltzner said.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, REUTERS)