Perseverance Rover to get the most advanced pair of 'eyes' ahead of NASA's Mars mission

National Aeronautics ncy's (NASA) Perseverance Rover which will be landing on Mars in February 2021 will have  most advanced pair of "eyes" ever sent to Red Planet's surface. Mastcam-Z instrument which will be mounted on Perseverance Rover comes with advanced zoom capabilities which will help make 3D imry more easily for mission.

Mastcam-Z [Z stands for zoom] is an upgraded version of Mastcam which was used in Curiosity Rover mission. camera produced fantastic parama ims but lacked zoom capabilities. Curiosity's Mastcam was initially designed to have zoom capability however, it proved difficult to pack feature in such a small instrument n as Curiosity was launched in 2011.

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" original plan was for Curiosity to have a zoom camera that could go out to an extreme wide-angle like a spaghetti western view," said Jim Bell of Arizona State University, Mastcam-Z's principal investigator and Mastcam's deputy principal investigator.

"It would have been an amazing paramic perspective but proved really hard to build at time," Bell added.

Perseverance is a robotic scientist weighing about 2,260 pounds (1,025 kilograms). rover's astrobiology mission will search for signs of past microbial life. It will characterise planet's climate and geology, collect samples for a future return to Earth, and pave way for human exploration of Red Planet.

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Rover is currently undergoing final assembly and checkout at ncy's Kennedy Center in Florida. It will eir be launched in July or August on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Launch Complex 41 at nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and is scheduled to land at Mars' Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021.

Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission is part of a larger program that includes missions to Moon as a way to prepare for human exploration of Red Planet. Through its Artemis program, NASA intends to land first woman and next man on lunar surface in 2024 and establish a sustained human presence on and around Moon by 2028, using it as a stepping stone to sending astronauts to Mars.

(With ANI inputs)