NASA shares Perseverance’s first 360° view of Mars

On February 18, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars and sent back to Earth its first images. Since then, NASA’s Perseverance team has been busy exploring the Jezero Crater area. NASA has followed up its initial images with a high-quality, detailed 360° interactive image.

The video below, which has on-screen controls when viewed in a compatible browser on desktop or the YouTube app on mobile devices, shows a 360° view from Perseverance’s landing site on Mars.

The images above were captured using Perseverance’s onboard color Navigation Cameras, or Navcams. The Navcams are on the remote sensing mast (or ‘head’) of Perseverance. The Navcams are part of a group of 19 total cameras on the rover itself. You can see the location of the Navcams on a 3D model of Perseverance below. If you’d like to explore the 3D model for yourself, you can do so here.

Outlined in blue are Perseverance’s two NavCams. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

There are a pair of 20MP Navcams on Perseverance. The Navcams are ‘engineering cameras.’ There are nine engineering cameras in total, all capturing 20MP color images. There are seven imaging units in the EDL Camera Suite, four of which were used during descent, ranging from 1.3 to 3.1MP. Finally, there are seven science cameras onboard. These range from 0.43MP to 4MP and are used for specific analytical and investigative tasks during Perseverance’s mission. You can learn more about the cameras here.

Perseverance’s cameras and their locations. Click to enlarge. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

To already 4K imagery from Mars published mere days after the rover landed is an impressive accomplishment. NASA has published additional images since our initial coverage, which can be viewed in this regularly-updated gallery on NASA’s Perseverance website.

Yesterday, NASA released a new video showing Perseverance’s descent on February 18. It includes views from several cameras as part of the rover’s entry, descent and landing stages. The included audio is from mission control.

You can view a map below. It shows where the rover itself and its many parts landed on the Martian surface.

”This first image of NASA’s Perseverance Rover on the surface of Mars from the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows many parts of the Mars 2020 mission landing system that got the rover safely on the ground.’ Image and caption credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona.

There will be much more to come from Perseverance. To see new videos as NASA publishes them, subscribe to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory YouTube channel and NASA’s YouTube channel.