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Perseverance's eyes see a different Mars

鈥淲e developed Mastcam-Z for a rover going to a spot on Mars that hadn鈥檛 been selected yet, so we had to design it with all the possibilities in mind鈥攖he optimal set of eyes to capture the geology of any spot on Mars,鈥 says Melissa Rice, a planetary scientist at Western Washington University and coinvestigator on Mastcam-Z.

Close-up, Mastcam-Z can see details about 1 millimeter across; from 100 meters out, it鈥檒l pick up a feature just 4 centimeters wide. That鈥檚 better than you and me. It also sees color better鈥攐r, rather, 鈥渕ultispectrally,鈥 capturing the broadband visible spectrum that human people are used to, but also about a dozen narrow-band not-quite-colors. (Rice co-wrote a  about all this stuff.)