Monday, February 22, 2021

Perseverance Rover’s Descent and Touchdown on Mars



Last week, NASA landed another robot on Mars, one with its own helicopter, using a sky crane, 131 million miles away, after a journey of a year and a half. Now, NASA has released a video that shows the Perseverance rover landing on the red planet. Even if you watched the coverage live, this is something special. The point of view is from several GoPro-type cameras installed on the various components.

The views include a camera looking down from the spacecraft's descent stage (a kind of rocket-powered jet pack that helps fly the rover to its landing site), a camera on the rover looking up at the descent stage, a camera on the top of the aeroshell (a capsule protecting the rover) looking up at that parachute, and a camera on the bottom of the rover looking down at the Martian surface.

Notice the graphics at the bottom to keep us up on what stage the descent is in. It also contains audio from Mission Control and a reaction shot when it's all said and done. If all that's not exciting enough for you, there's also a fan version with music. (via reddit)

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