NASA Mars Perseverance rover took a time-lapse movie of the somewhat-cloudy Martian sky when it serendipitously captured the smaller of the pink planet’s two moons, Deimos, twinkling above within the Martian twilight.
The Perseverance workforce produced a brief movie of the Martian sky taken from a sequence of images from the Mars rover and posted the video to Twitter underneath the rover’s personal Twitter account, NASAPersevere.
Sky watching is enjoyable regardless of the place you’re. I took this brief time lapse film to look at for clouds, and caught one thing else: look carefully and also you’ll see Deimos, certainly one of two moons of Mars.Extra on this tiny moon: https://t.co/TzHMc0aIS3 pic.twitter.com/akfbhfsw33August 20, 2021
The Mars rover, which landed on Mars earlier this yr, has solely actually begun the work it was despatched to Mars to carry out. It is lastly getting to gather soil samples and on the lookout for indicators of historical life in a area of Mars as soon as believed to comprise a primordial lake that dried up billions of years in the past.
Like its cousin the NASA Mars Curiosity rover, Perseverance is especially adept at social media – or extra exactly, their groups again on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are – and so getting new posts from the newer rover’s perspective on Mars by way of Twitter appears to be like prefer it’s a scientific custom that can proceed for the foreseeable future.
Evaluation: Science is far more ‘Huh, will you have a look at that…’ than it’s ‘Eureka!’
Whereas this isn’t the primary time we have seen Deimos or its sibling moon, Phobos, from the Martian floor, the latest Perseverance time lapse movie is a reminder that the very best science often occurs once you’re not anticipating it or you’re on the lookout for one thing else solely.
A few of the best scientific discoveries, like penicillin, took place as a result of somebody noticed or realized one thing they hadn’t got down to discover, however adopted their curiosity towards a big discovery or to point out us one thing identified from a brand new perspective.
So whereas recognizing Deimos from the Jezero Crater and capturing it on movie is not precisely new, it is nonetheless evokes the form of awe that makes us all love science, and area science specifically, within the first place.