NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover: Use the Force, Percy!
Sol 670 (January 7, 2023)
🎬 360VR video 8K: https://youtu.be/_mY8wRk8QUk with real sounds from the surface
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NASA's Mars Exploration Program
Source images credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
Stitching and retouching: Andrew Bodrov / 360pano.eu
The panorama is made up of 116 individual Mastcam-Z images stitched together. The images were taken on Sol 670 (January 7, 2023).
What do you see in the picture above - an abandoned lightsaber dropped by a Jedi Knight, lying forgotten amidst the Tattoine sand? It may look like a scene straight out of Star Wars, but sometimes life imitates art. The apparent “lightsaber” is actually an ~18 cm (~7 in) long sample tube holding a rock core drilled by NASA’s Perseverance rover, collected from Jezero Crater, Mars, for potential return to Earth. Instead of a long time ago in a galaxy far away, this little tube was dropped just a few days ago on January 3, 2023, at a carefully selected spot in the “Three Forks” region, which lies within a desiccated ancient lakebed on the surface of Earth’s neighboring planet. This tube is one of 10 that are currently being deposited in a “depot-building” process that is expected to take about a month.