On the night of February 18-19, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars. National Geographic’s new augmented reality experience offers Instagram users the chance to become one with the rover in its quest for signs of an ancient life form on the Red Planet. They will be able to see through his eyes, observe his very first panorama, manipulate his arms and, of course, take a selfie with him.
The experience was built using Instagram’s Spark AR platform, accessible to all Instagram users.
National Geographic partnered with NASA to make sure the experience was as authentic as possible, garnering advice from scientists and engineers who worked on the rover’s design, like Roger Weins (SUPERCAM), Christina Diaz (PIXL) and Jim Bell (Mastcam-Z).
Launch the filter, and you’re in space. Tap the screen to fly to Mars. You are now on Martian soil, right in the middle of Jezero Crater. Rotate your phone to sweep the landscape. Point it down and you will notice that your body is now that of the robot, your eyes instead of its cameras, dubbed Mastcam-Z.
Touch the rover’s arm and it unfolds to the ground, ready to go. The PIXL instrument at its tip measures the chemical composition of Martian rocks, in the hope of finding evidence of ancient microbial life. As scientists identify promising rock strata, Perseverance extracts them from cores and stores them in tubes that will be analyzed when they return to Earth.
Next, tap the camera icon at the bottom right of the Instagram screen to switch to selfie mode. Here you are on Mars, alongside the digital rover programmed to mimic the movements of your head. Open your mouth and Perseverance emits a laser beam, the one used by Supercam to vaporize the rock. In reality, this laser is invisible; on Mars, it would only show a flash on impact. Then, you are invited to take a selfie using the shutter button (at the bottom of the screen), or a video by keeping the button pressed. You are free to share this extraterrestrial recording on your Instagram Story. Our Digital Perseverance is programmed to wrap his arm around you, so technically he’s the photographer.
Finally, switch back to the front camera and take a look at the very first immersive 360 ° view captured by the rover, with a few tweaks. The rover in the original image has been replaced by a 3D model from NASA and the sky has been “added” to provide a completely spherical panorama. In general, the NASA science team prefers to photograph the terrain rather than the sky.
One day, humans will set foot on Mars, but in the meantime we will have to be content with virtual reality.
National Geographic has already completed three other augmented reality projects through the Spark platform. To discover them, look for Spinosaurus, Climb Everest and The World in 2070.
BOARDING
If you are reading this article on your smartphone, just click on this link to open the effect in the Instagram app.
If you read it on another device, you can find the effect and other augmented reality experiences on Instagram by doing the following:
- Open Instagram.
- Swipe the home screen on the left to open the Instagram camera.
- Then scroll through the filters until you reach Browse Effects, on the far right.
- Look for Mars AR.
Quench your thirst for knowledge about the Red Planet by continuing the journey on National Geographic.
This article originally appeared on nationalgeographic.com in the English language.
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