After its successful landing, Perseverance was able to take 142 photos of the planet that NASA has combined to create a 360-degree panorama of Mars. The rover that landed on February 18th and lowered to the planet’s surface by a “sky crane”, will be searching for signs of past life.

The device used to take these photos, known as the Mastcam-Z, will be utilized to send NASA pictures of rocks that might be worth investigating. These samples will eventually be sent back to Earth, giving us an opportunity to find out if life ever did exist on Mars.

One of the places the rover will be exploring is a crater named Jezero, that is said to have held water billions of years ago.

“Mars is another step towards the future, the human species has come so far from living in caves to us doing out of world things literally,” said Sayed Shah, a WJPS junior. 

Nicole Freyeisen, another junior at WJPS, said, “I think it’s really cool because now we can finally see and know what’s on Mars, and possibly see if we could end up living on that planet or not.”

“From Mars Rover: Panorama Above ‘Perseverance Valley'” by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0