Since landing on February 18, the NASA Perseverance Rover has had the chance to look around and explore the surrounding landscape, displaying some pretty typical Mars sights with dust, dirt and rocks.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
The March 2020 turnover change country less than two weeks ago in the Jezero crater on the red planet, but the advanced robot has already returned some of the most memorable movies in history.
Cameras on the rover and the descent module that carried it through the Martian atmosphere documented the last few minutes of the long journey from Earth in a remarkable and spectacular way. With the dramatic landing falling out of the way, the much more cold but no less interesting task of exploring the surface begins.
British filmmaker Sean Doran has taken some of the first images Perseverance took from Jezero Crater and processed it into This is Mars, a short film that is one of the most captivating 30 minute panning shots you will ever see.
Doran took a series of photos of Perseverance’s mast-mounted camera system (Mastcam-Z) taken from the planet on the fifth March day, polished, assembled and set to music. The results are, well, different.
The expansive panorama is meditative to look at and reminiscent of certain volcanic or desert landscapes on earth. It’s easy to see why Mars analogues are located in places like Utah and Hawaii.
The raw image data is publicly available via NASA’s feed and perseverance has already sent thousands of images back. Doran writes on YouTube that the images for this film were “denied, repaired, rated and scaled up.”
Look at this:
Watch NASA’s video for through landing (and hear the …
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The sharp footage also brings a sharper resolution to how treacherous Perseverance’s landing in Jezero crater was. The immediate vicinity of the Rover appears to be littered with large boulders and at least one cliff.
It will be exciting to watch sequels to this film when Perseverance actually starts rolling around and exploring further.
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