Perseverance Selfie with Ingenuity
On sol 46 (April 6, 2021) the Perseverance rover held out a
robotic arm to take
its first selfie on Mars.
The WATSON camera at the end of the arm
was designed to take close-ups of martian rocks and
surface details though, and not a quick snap shot of friends and
smiling faces.
In the end,
teamwork
and weeks of planning on Mars time
was required to program a complex series of
exposures and camera motions to include Perseverance and its
surroundings.
The resulting 62 frames were composed into a detailed mosiac,
one of the most complicated Mars rover selfies ever taken.
In this version of the
selfie, the rover's
Mastcam-Z and SuperCam instruments are looking
toward WATSON and the end of the rover's outstretched arm.
About 4 meters (13 feet) from Perseverance is a robotic companion,
the Mars Ingenuity helicopter.