© Provided by CNETSince landing on Feb. 18, the NASA Perseverance rover has had a chance to look around and scope out the surrounding landscape, which shows off some pretty typical Mars sights of dust, dirt and rocks. NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Mars 2020 Perseverance rover landed in Jezero Crater on the red planet less than two weeks ago, but the advanced robot has already sent back some of the most memorable motion pictures in history.
Cameras on the rover and the descent module that carried it through the Martian atmosphere documented the last few minutes of the long journey from Earth in a remarkable and spectacular way. With the dramatic landing out of the way, the far more chill but no less intriguing task of exploring the surface begins.
UK filmmaker Sean Doran has taken some of the first images taken by Perseverance from within Jezero Crater and processed them to create This is Mars, a short film that's one of the most captivating 30-minute panning shots you'll ever see.
Doran took a series of photos from Perseverance's mast-mounted camera system (Mastcam-Z) taken on the rover's fifth Martian day on the planet, polished them up, stitched them together and set them to music. The results are, well, otherworldly.
© NASA/JPL-Caltech Since landing on Feb. 18, the NASA Perseverance rover has had a chance to look around and scope out the surrounding landscape, which shows off some pretty typical Mars sights of dust, dirt and rocks.
The extended panorama is meditative to watch and reminiscent of certain volcanic or desert landscapes on the Earth. It's easy to see why Mars analogs are located in places like Utah and Hawaii.
The raw image data is publicly available via NASA's feed and Perseverance has already sent back thousands of images. Doran writes on YouTube that the images were "denoised, repaired, graded and upscaled for this film."
Watch NASA's Perseverance landing video (and hear the sounds of Mars)
![UP NEXT]()
UP NEXT
The crisp visuals also bring into sharper resolution just how treacherous Perseverance's landing in Jezero Crater was. The rover's immediate surroundings appear to be littered with large boulders and at least one quite sheer-looking cliff.
It will be exciting to watch for sequels to this film when Perseverance starts to actually roll around and explore farther afield.
Follow CNET's 2021 Space Calendar to stay up to date with all the latest space news this year. You can even add it to your own Google Calendar.