48 – Zooming in on Mars (feat. Melissa Rice and Elsa Jensen)

NASA’s upcoming flagship mission Mars2020 will send a state of the art rover to the surface of Mars. Along for the ride will be an impressive camera called Mastcam-Z which will unveil Mars in a way never seen before. Planetary scientist Melissa Rice from Western Washington University and instrument operations manager Elsa Jensen from Malin Space Science Systems join Jake to talk all about the new camera, how it’s put together and what questions it might help us answer. We talk Mastcam-Z and NASA’s Mars2020 Rover Planetary Society’s Mastcam-Z Outreach content NASA’s page on Mastcam-Z Malin Space Science Systems Previous Coverage of Mars2020 Episode 10 – Science Meets Engineering on the 2020 Rover (feat. Sarah Milkovich) Episode 20 – Landing Site Candidate Overview Follow Jake & WeMartians Website (www.wemartians.com) Patreon (www.patreon.com/wemartians) WeMartians Shop (shop.wemartians.com) Twitter (@we_martians) Jake’s Twitter (@JakeOnOrbit) The Off-Nominal Podcast Our Sponsor WeMartians is sponsored by MOVA Globes. Visit the site and use the code WEMARTIANS for 10% off your order of one of these really great looking pieces shipping to the Americas. They rotate without cords or batteries! Patrons, check your Patreon account for a special Patron-only discount code. Thanks to MOVA Globes for helping us explore Mars together. Learn how MOVA worked with Marc Rayman from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to put together the Vesta globe using data from the Dawn Mission! WeMartians music is “RetroFuture”, “Electrodoodle”, and “On My Way” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/