In an attempt to thoroughly explore Mars, space agency NASA has equipped its Perseverance rover with the most advanced pair of “eyes”.
NASA aims to study the geological features of the Jezero crater through the Perseverance rover.
Mastcam-Z, located on the rover’s head, will help the mission create 3D imagery more easily. NASA's Curiosity Mars rover used Mastcam to produce panoramas of the Martian landscape.
While the Mastcam-Z can zoom into images, Mastcam cannot do so. Apart from providing images, Mastcam-Z will provide “key data to help engineers navigate and scientists choose interesting rocks to study.”
A close-up of the head of Mars Perseverance's remote sensing mast. The mast head contains the SuperCam instrument (its lens is in the large circular opening). In the gray boxes beneath mast head are the two Mastcam-Z imagers. On the exterior sides of those imagers are the rover's two navigation cameras.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“The original plan was for Curiosity to have a zoom camera that could go out to an extreme wide-angle, like a spaghetti western view,” said Jim Bell of Arizona State University, Mastcam-Z's principal investigator and Mastcam's deputy principal investigator.
He added that they found it hard to execute the plan at that time.
Mastcam-Z has the capability to view surroundings under various wavelengths of light. Using this feature, NASA aims to discover the various materials on Mars’ surface, such as fallen meteorites.
The instrument will provide “superhuman vision,” helping view the landscapes in a variety of colours, including some that can’t be detected by the human eye.
It is not a spectrometer, an instrument that uses light to do a detailed scientific analysis, but “it can provide mineral clues that other instruments will follow up on.”
The Mars 2020 mission is expected to take off on 17 July.
NASA is gearing up to launch astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken into space on 27 May in partnership with private aerospace company SpaceX.
This is happening almost 10 years after the last Space Shuttle Program lifted off (2011) from the Kennedy Space Centre.
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