What’s that thing?
Eye-catching detail
NASA is embarking on its next exciting adventure on the Martian surface – and luckily the agency is taking us along for the ride.
Earlier this week, NASA released a beautiful, high-resolution panorama taken by Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z camera and later assembled by engineers at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California.
The image displays incredible detail. This leaves you with an unprecedented look at the surrounding Jezero Crater, a region on Mars that is thought to be a dried-up ancient river delta. Suspect.
Harbor Seal Rock
Beneath the innumerable rocks, the scientists noticed a rather strange explosion. In the rocky landscape, a dark, extraordinarily long stone stands out. Thanks to the shape of an aquatic mammal, the team nicknamed it “Harbor Seal Rock”, according to Jim Bell, chief investigator of Mastcam-Z, who spoke during a webcast on Thursday, as quoted by Space.com.
The rock was probably formed during countless years of hard winds hitting the crater.
Set up the stage
The panorama also showed an area near the rover where the dust was blown away by Perseverance’s ‘sky crane’, a rocket-propelled downhill stage that slides the rover gently down to the surface on 18 February.
According to other scientists, other areas, just like this, may be experiencing scars, the result of volcanic activity, but investigations have yet to begin, so they are not quite ready to give a guess yet.
Fortunately, we will be taking a closer look at Perseverance’s environment soon. Once the rover switches to surface-optimized software, a four-day process that has already begun, Perseverance will enable panoramas that are three times as sharp.
READ MORE: ‘Harbor Seal Rock’ on Mars and other new attractions intrigue scientists of perseverance [Space.com]
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