The view from Mars: Here’s the 1st photo from NASA’s Perseverance rover!

Just minutes after NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover nailed its landing on the Red Planet, the spacecraft despatched again the first two pictures of its new residence in Jezero Crater.

After a seven-month trek to Mars, the Perseverance rover accomplished the perilous touchdown process nicknamed “seven minutes of terror” on Thursday (Feb. 18), with the profitable touchdown introduced simply earlier than 4 p.m. EST (2100 GMT, or 1 p.m. PST at the mission’s headquarters at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Just minutes after the good news arrived, NASA obtained the rover’s first two pictures.

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These images had been taken by hazard cameras connected to the spacecraft and are black and white pictures; they had been additionally taken with covers nonetheless connected to the digital camera lenses for his or her safety. Later pictures from the rover might be way more spectacular.

The first picture additionally reveals the comforting shadow of the rover itself forged on the Martian floor. The new images will even assist mission personnel determine exactly the place in the touchdown zone Perseverance touched down.

But these pictures are simply what scientists on the mission needed to see, displaying off the rocky floor of Mars’ Jezero Crater. Mission scientists selected the location as a result of they consider that when the Red Planet was nonetheless lined in water, the crater was as soon as a lake, with a river delta depositing sediments on its flooring.