You’d be forgiven for thinking that the image above is from a remote part of the Atacama Desert in Chile, or perhaps a broad, sandy expanse like those found in parts of Utah. But you’d have to journey quite a bit farther to reach this landscape—more than 200 million miles, as a matter of fact, which would take at least seven months of continuous travel.
NASA’s Perseverance Rover, which launched in July 2020 and landed on Mars in February 2021, is on a mission to search for microbial life on the Red Planet and to further the space agency’s goal of figuring out if humans could live there. On May 26, Perseverance used its Mastcam-Z camera to capture a 360-degree panorama of an area NASA calls “Falbreen.”
The rover took this image on its 1,516th sol, or Martian day, on the planet. In one of the clearest panoramic photos taken on this mission, Perseverance illuminates a clear-ish day in a landscape that is often cloaked in rust-colored dust.
Thanks to some perception-bending digital color enhancement, the stunning composite image shows the landscape of Mars under a bright, blue sky. “The relatively dust-free skies provide a clear view of the surrounding terrain,” Jim Bell, Mastcam-Z’s principal investigator at Arizona State University in Tempe, says in a statement. “And in this particular mosaic, we have enhanced the color contrast, which accentuates the differences in the terrain and sky.”
It’s not difficult to imagine taking in this view of Falbreen along a hiking trail somewhere just out of frame. Reminders come in the form of bits of the rover apparatus and a white spot on the ground called an abrasion patch, where Perseverance’s abrasion bit has left “tool marks” after interacting with the surface of the rock.
In another image processed with true color, the scene appears fairly monochromatic, reflecting what we’d see if we were there. Yet the color-enhanced image suggests that Mars might actually be—if even just a little—relatable. (via PetaPixel)
