I have nothing to add to your excellent, well-sourced and comprehensive reply, save this:
If the budget cuts do end up harming US (and int’l) research funding as much as some people clearly want them to, NASA and the science community has every right to use the “downward facing” shot to represent Percy being sad. And even sad Percy is more popular than the people behind these cuts.
Those four selfies that Paul links to above all represent significant mission milestones - the deployment of Ingenuity, our first sampling attempt, our finding of a “potential biosignature” down in the valley, and the rover at the sample depot.
Perhaps this latest one can be labeled “Perseverance’s Pre-Budget Cut Selfie”.
I have nothing to add to your excellent, well-sourced and comprehensive reply, save this:
If the budget cuts do end up harming US (and int’l) research funding as much as some people clearly want them to, NASA and the science community has every right to use the “downward facing” shot to represent Percy being sad. And even sad Percy is more popular than the people behind these cuts.
Those four selfies that Paul links to above all represent significant mission milestones - the deployment of Ingenuity, our first sampling attempt, our finding of a “potential biosignature” down in the valley, and the rover at the sample depot.
Perhaps this latest one can be labeled “Perseverance’s Pre-Budget Cut Selfie”.