NASA on February 19 released stunning new photographs from Perseverance. It includes one of the rover being gently lowered to the surface of Mars by a set of cables, the first time such a view has been captured. The high-resolution still was extracted from a video taken by the descent stage of the spacecraft that had transported the rover from Earth. Another new image, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, captures Perseverance as it was parachuting down through the atmosphere at hundreds of miles an hour. Perseverance has also been able to upload its first high-resolution, colour photo showing the flat region it landed on in the Jezero Crater, where a river & deep lake existed billions of years ago. Volcanic rocks in particular can be dated with very high precision once the samples are brought back to Earth on a future return mission, an exciting development from a planetary science perspective. NASA hopes to have more high-resolution photos and videos in the coming days, but doesn't know yet if it has successfully recorded sound on Mars for the first time using microphones.
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