Question: As well as helping to guide the rover does the 3D colour camera have any other purpose on the rover?

Craig Leff answered on 29 Apr 2020:

You are correct: PanCam will help guide the rover. In addition, we are carrying camera filters that will tell us about the composition of the surface. Combining blue/green/red will give us regular colour images like you might get from your smartphone (one camera on the rover does work like a smartphone — our other two cameras use different technology but the result is the same.) In addition to “regular” colour, we have other specialised filters that collect data about the composition of the rocks — each single filter provides a little bit of data (one point on a graph), and when you combine filters you add points to that graph, and you can combine those points and make a line — sort of like a connect-the-dots puzzle. When you look closely at how wiggly the line is, it can tell you what rocks and minerals are on the surface, as each one has its own “signature” — we just need to understand how to read it.