Many began posting a video of what seems to be panorama scenery with sound recorded by the Mars Curiosity rover after the Perseverance rover landed on Mars Thursday.

Science Times | Space - Mars rover Drilling rock samples
(Photo : NASA/JPL-Caltech)
In this illustration, NASA’s Mars 2020 rover uses its drill to core a rock sample on Mars. The rover will collect and store rock and soil samples on the planet’s surface that future missions will retrieve and return to Earth.

Unfortunately, millions of netizens have already seen this new, fake tale portrayed by the viral video circulated on Twitter. Not only the regular, some of the most popular celebrities in the country, such as author Stephen King, have fallen for it.

 


Although the photos are really from Mars, they are panoramic stills stitched together to appear like the rover is panning through the landscape.

Forbes said Perseverance uploaded the first high-resolution color picture displaying the flat field in which it landed in the Jezero Crater. NASA claims that the clip above from Perseverance's fall is currently part of a broader video already being transmitted to Earth

A second color picture depicts one of the rover's six wheels, lying alongside it with some honeycombed rocks believed to be more than 3.6 billion years old.

Again, the sound of wind applied to the photographs circulating on Twitter is entirely artificial. While sound will be used in the Perseverance images, NASA still downloads and processes sound sent back from the rover, the spokeswoman said.

So enjoy the familiar, old photos of Curiosity. But remember that, possibly, very soon, something fresh and much more spectacular is arriving. NASA said on Twitter that there is a scheduled press briefing scheduled for 2 p.m. ET on Monday afternoon for Percy's updates.

ALSO READ: Can NASA Perseverance Rover Bring Back Ambient Sounds to Earth?


Why is it Not a Video for Perseverance?

Is the Perseverance rover actually taken a viral video of a reddish, sweeping view of Mars followed by the sound of the wind? The 26-second video doesn't belong to Perseverance. Here are the reasons why the viral Perseverance video is fake, according to Mashable.

  1. NASA also hasn't ordered Perseverance to move anywhere. A long trail of rover tracks is seen in the film.
  2. You will see 'Curiosity' written on the rover at the end of the film (bottom left).
  3. NASA still has not yet ordered Perseverance (as of Feb. 20) to raise its mast, which houses the high-definition cameras that might catch those images.
  4. To record Martian sound, Perseverance has microphones. These microphones are not usable on the Curiosity rover. However, NASA engineers discovered a clever way to detect any Martian wind using NASA's InSight lander about two years ago. But the noises in the video have no relation to the imagery.
  5. The photos seem like they were shot on a high ridge. Perseverance purposefully landed along an ancient river delta in a crater where NASA claims water once existed on Mars.

Built with exceptional technologies to scan for possible signs of past microbial existence on Mars, the Perseverance rover has a bright future, whatever it discovers (or does not find).

ALSO READ: NASA's Perseverance Rover Finally Lands on Mars


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