I have seen thousands upon thousands of still frames from the MER, MSL and Mars 2020 missions, but very few that take the perspective seen above. I find it practical and useful for the following reasons:
- Seeing exactly which clasts and sand ripples have been in contact with the rover (notice the pebbles and cobbles that have been pushed into sand, exposing darker material). The rover’s tracks aren’t always evident, and this helps.
- We can easily see the state of the wheels
- We get instant perspective on the size of surface features
- We can observe sedimentation on the rover (how much sand/dust is coating it) through time
However…
Shots like this are just really cool. People already anthropomorphize rovers (and Ingenuity), because we like seeing ourselves on other worlds by proxy. People also like monster trucks, mudbogging, ATVs, and just plain getting dirty. Mars is known for being cold and arid, but the truth is, barring any possible toxins in the soil or dust, it’s really a place for big kids! Geologists aren’t the only ones who like to play in the rocks. There’s a whole culture out there that likes to put metal to dirt or hard stone, and I don’t feel like we reach them enough. More of these, please!
The rover operations team command the rover to take a full set of NavCam tiled images after ever drive, the example you posted here is a left navigation camera tile. A minimum of 4 tiles are required to assemble a full frame image from each camera, at leased 5 full frame stereo images are acquired (40 tiles), many more if the horizon is clipped. At science stops that require more a lot more detail, they can command up to 16 tiles for a single image of the workspace. The tile you posted was acquired after the short drive on sol 1092. As of today the rover has completed over 360 drives, so you can find a lot of similar images of the right side wheels on the mission server. Presently there are 49,740 NavCam tiles on the server, I’d estimate that close to 15 to 20% of the post drive tiled images feature the ground very close to the rover. Also check out the front and rear HazCam tiles as they are also acquired after every drive. Currently there are 15,467 HazCam tiles on the image server, these all feature the terrain close to the rover. Today is sol 1093, the rover did not drive today, but it has already downlinked 57 NavCam tiles, so I think you have plenty to cover your needs :)
Thanks for your detailed reply, Paul. It would definitely be worth compiling a set of NavCam images like the ones we’re talking about here. A casual review came up with this recent one, and Sol 1093 has another, so there should be a few.
Just to clarify, the very specific framing of the NavCam tile above is something I don’t remember seeing much since we landed. There are a few elements that make the shot perfect, like the ratio of rover suspension/wheels to surface, the shadows, alignment of the rover and so on. The sense of depth created by seeing parts of the rover at different heights from the camera is really important here. I realize that I’m getting into the weeds and thinking like a photographer and not a rover planner. I’m just trying to point out that this specific framing here is both informative and artistic - maybe even iconic - in a way that other regularly-planned shots don’t quite match.
I’ll see if I can compile a list in the next week or so.
At the end of each drive the rover sometimes partially rotates to align its radio antennas towards Earth depending on mission priorities. that partial rotation is performed in place and can leave those nice tracks on the ground in sandy conditions. Knowing the diameter of the wheels and the number of grousers one can readily get a good feel of the scale of the terrain from spacing of those tracks. Getting the sun in the right place to illuminate that scene is just good luck. As a once budding amateur photographer I know what you mean about framing and those occasional artistic shots when everything aligns just right, that’s why the MSL B&W images really tick a lot of boxes for me, something colour images can rarely do for me, B&W images seems to portray the mood and tells the story better for me without the distraction of colour. Here’s an example from Curiosity that ticked all of my boxes a few thousand sols ago :) https://www.flickr.com/photos/105796482@N04/20323716143/