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NASA's Mars Exploration Program (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Sol 0789: Element-ary, My Dear WATSON
The panorama is made up of 104 individual Mastcam-Z images stitched together. The images were taken on Sol 789 (May 10, 2023).
When it comes to searching for clues about Mars’ geologic past and present, SHERLOC and WATSON are on the case! SHERLOC stands for Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals, and WATSON stands for Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering. SHERLOC and WATSON both sit at the end of Perseverance’s robotic arm, and their names pay homage to the detective work these complementary instruments carry out on Mars as they scan and image rocks up close to query their composition.
SHERLOC is made up of a laser that zaps rocks, spectrometers that detect minerals and organic molecules by measuring laser-rock interactions, and a camera to take images of the scan regions so scientists can identify correlations between rock textures and compositions. WATSON is a camera modeled after the MAHLI (Mars Hand Lens Imager) camera onboard the Curiosity rover, and it takes close-range images (you can find them at this link by selecting “SHERLOC – WATSON” under “Science Cameras” in the panel on the right side of the page) that help rover operators decide exactly where to point SHERLOC so scientists can target visually-interesting areas of rock to scan, while avoiding topographically-challenging surfaces that could prove problematic for instrument placement. In addition to snapping pictures of rock targets before and after SHERLOC runs, WATSON plays an important role in helping the team choose exactly where to place the rover’s drill to sample, documenting the coring process, and providing support for other rover instruments like PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry), MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment), and SuperCam.
To date, SHERLOC and WATSON have scanned every rock and regolith target where cores were drilled for return to Earth, in addition to performing analyses at several standalone locations along the rover’s traverse. By querying mineralogy, analyzing textures, and looking for organic molecules, SHERLOC and WATSON- along with other rover instruments- help mission scientists and engineers to better understand the geologic history of Jezero crater, search for potentially habitable environments, characterize astrobiologically-interesting rocks, and select which targets to sample for future return to Earth. These robotic gumshoes are continuing to make exciting discoveries about Mars as Perseverance roves across the surface of our neighboring red planet, and with each new discovery they remind us of the original Holmes, who said “Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last.”
Written by Denise Buckner, Student Collaborator at University of Florida A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust). Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis. The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover. Other panoramas of Mars by Perseverance rover:
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The planet Earth has proven to be too limiting for our awesome community of panorama photographers. We're getting an increasing number of submissions that depict locations either not on Earth (like Mars, the Moon, and Outer Space in general) or do not realistically represent a geographic location on Earth (either because they have too many special effects or are computer generated) and hence don't strictly qualify for our Panoramic World project.But many of these panoramas are extremely beautiful or popular of both.So, in order to accommodate our esteemed photographers and the huge audience that they attract to 360Cities with their panoramas, we've created a new section (we call it an "area") called "Out of this World" for panoramas like these.Don't let the fact that these panoramas are being placed at the Earth's South Pole fool you - we had to put them somewhere in order not to interfere with our Panoramic World.Welcome aboard on a journey "Out of this World".
