Surveyor mission, and is the principal investigator for both the Context Camera and the Mars Color Imager on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The science team for Mastcam and two other instruments the same company provided for Curiosity includes the lead scientist for the mast-mounted science cameras on Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity (James Bell of Arizona State University); the lead scientist for the mast camera on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander (Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University); James Cameron, director of such popular movies as "Titanic" and "Avatar"; and 17 others with expertise in geology, soils, frost, atmosphere, imaging and other topics.

Mastcam 100 and Mastcam 34 were installed onto Curiosity in 2010. Until March 2011, a possibility remained open that they might be replaced with a different design: two identicalzoom cameras. A zoom camera has adjustable focal length, to change from wider-angle to telephoto or vice-versa. That design had been Malin's original proposal. NASA changed the plan to two different fixed-focal-length cameras in 2007 as a cost-cutting measure that preserves the capability for meeting the science goals of the mission and the instrument. The agency funded a renewed possibility for using the zoom-camera design in 2010, but the zoom development presented challenges that could not be fully overcome with enough time for required testing on the rover.

Mastcam 34 took images for a mosaic showing Curiosity's upper deck during tests in March 2011 inside a chamber simulating Mars surface temperature and air pressure. Testing of the rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., will wrap up in