NASA's Perseverance rover is equipped with a large set of cameras, 23 to be exact, which together enable a wide range of scientific investigations and engineering activities. Since the rover landed at Jezero Crater, the cameras have become "eyes" on the Martian ground. In less than a year, the rover has sent back thousands of stunning images of local surface features that have provided scientists with the first on-site observations of the rocks at the bottom of the crater and within the well-preserved delta.
Images obtained from rover cameras are crucial to interpreting the geological history of craters and identifying potential biosignatures in the rock record of Jezero Crater, a major focus of the mission.
However, these cameras are not just used to photograph rocks. Each week, the rover team also took a large number of images of the sky and atmosphere around the rover, which allowed the researchers to study environmental dynamics and weather patterns. The rover's Navcam is often used to search for evidence of clouds and surface dust lifting in the sky, such as dust-filled swirls known as "dust devils," as well as other wind-driven dust events. Images taken from SkyCam of the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer are often used to study atmospheric opacity (tau), which fluctuates depending on the amount of dust in the atmosphere. Typically, two to four SkyCam images are obtained for each solar day (sol), deliberately distributed in different local times to assess the diurnal variation of the dust load. Mastcam-Z images are also sometimes used to complement SkyCam tau's observations.
In the past two weeks alone (sol263-276), more than 60 atmosphere-focused activities have used rover cameras, including more than 40 SkyCam images, about 10 Navcam "dust devil" observations, a handful of Navcam cloud images, and more than 12 Masscam-Z tau images. On day 257, one of these Masscam-Z images provided an accidental observation: while the last of the four tau images was scheduled for evening and could not be used for opacity measurements, it duly provided the first sunset image of the mission.
For the remainder of Perseverance's exploration of Jezero Crater, the rover team will continue to collect atmospheric observations on a regular basis to study the weather and dust processes. Images of the surface will be used to study local geology and look for signs of ancient life, while images of the sky will be used to characterize the climate of Mars and prepare for future human exploration of Mars.