TOUCHDOWN

Perseverance rover has landed safely on Mars

Since 2019 PLASMA has closely followed the MARS 2020 project and now in 2021 the mission has perservered (with rebranding) and has finally landed on the dry and dusty desert surface of Mars. The pandemic may have caused some unexpected obstacles, but the team proved more than capable of clearing any challenge, launching in July of 2020. After gliding through the vast nothingness for nearly seven months Perserverance touched down. Now we wait and hope that the mission can earn its name, survive, and enlighten us about the history and possible life on our interplanetary neighbor.

New video from NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover chronicles major milestones during the final minutes of its entry, descent, and landing on the Red Planet on Feb. 18 as the spacecraft plummeted, parachuted, and rocketed toward the surface of Mars. A microphone on the rover also has provided the first audio recording of sounds from Mars.

From the moment of parachute inflation, the camera system covers the entirety of the descent process, showing some of the rover’s intense ride to Mars’ Jezero Crater. The footage from high-definition cameras aboard the spacecraft starts 7 miles (11 kilometers) above the surface, showing the supersonic deployment of the most massive parachute ever sent to another world, and ends with the rover’s touchdown in the crater.

A microphone attached to the rover did not collect usable data during the descent, but the commercial off-the-shelf device survived the highly dynamic descent to the surface and obtained sounds from Jezero Crater on Feb. 20. About 10 seconds into the 60-second recording, a Martian breeze is audible for a few seconds, as are mechanical sounds of the rover operating on the surface.”

All we can say is that we’re eager to see the answers this 10-year Mars astrobiology mission provides us with… and what new questions will inevitably arise from these answers!

FULL VIDEO ON NASA.GOV

HiRISE was approximately 435 miles (700 kilometers) from Perseverance and traveling at about 6750 mile per hour (3 kilometers per second) at the time the image was taken. The extreme distance and high speeds of the two spacecraft were challenging conditions that required precise timing and for Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to both pitch upward and roll hard to the left so that Perseverance was viewable by HiRISE at just the right moment.

An illustration of NASA’s Perseverance rover landing safely on Mars. Hundreds of critical events must execute perfectly and exactly on time for the rover to land safely on Feb. 18, 2021. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This high-resolution still image is part of a video taken by several cameras as NASA’s Perseverance rover touched down on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021. A camera aboard the descent stage captured this shot. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech