NASA’s Perseverance rover successfully touched down on Mars on Thursday afternoon, and it’s set up a little something to get the internet to celebrate this incredible achievement in space exploration.
How to Take a Selfie on Mars
NASA’s newest online interactive feature comes in the form of an virtual photo booth. It allows you to put yourself on one of eight backgrounds, including on the surface of Mars next to Perseverance or outside the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“As NASA’s fifth Mars rover, Perseverance has an extraordinary engineering pedigree and mission team. We are excited to invite the entire world to share this exciting event with us,” said NASA Associate Administrator for Communications Marc Etkind.
It didn’t take very long until social media was flooded with pseudo-selfies of excited netizens posing on Mars, along with the hashtags #CountdownToMars and #mars2020.
The photo booth isn’t limited to photos with only one person, either. If you so desired, you could put entire groups of people or your pet on Mars, as some users have:
Want to edit subjects onto other backgrounds? That’s easy to do after you’ve learned how to make transparent backgrounds in Photoshop.
NASA’s Other Interactive Features
Following the launch of Mars 2020 last summer, the agency has since offered many ways you can join its mission from the convenience of your own home, as detailed on the NASA website. The Mars photo booth is but the most recent feature on the list.
For instance, NASA has created Facebook and Instagram AR filters that let you put on your mission control headset or place a 3D Mars rover in your scene. If you prefer not to be on camera, you could instead register to get your name onboard a future Mars exploration rover or get a 3D tour of the inside of the Perseverance.
What Is Mars 2020?
Mars 2020 is an exploration mission by NASA’s Mars Exploration Program that includes the Perseverance rover, nicknamed “Percy,” and a helicopter drone named Ingenuity. The two tools aim to investigate the surface of Mars in search of evidence of past habitability and life.
Perseverance (with Ingenuity onboard) launched from Earth in July 2020, and it confirmed to have landed on Mars on February 18, 2021 at 20:55 UTC. It touched down in the Jezero crater, the site of a former lake and river delta.
Keep Posted on the Perseverance’s Findings
As the Perseverance continues to explore Mars, you can watch the videos it sends back to Earth on the NASA JPL and NASA YouTube channels. Of course, NASA also keeps active accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Ingenuity will soon attempt to power the first controlled flight on another planet, so we can all keep our fingers crossed that we’ll soon see photos and videos of that feat as well.
