Earlier this month, after a 7-month journey from Earth, our Mars2020 mission landed the Perseverance rover on Mars in the Jezero Crater, near an ancient riverbed (yes, Mars once had thousands of rivers and lakes before the water froze, though some liquid water may still flow seasonally). If you haven’t caught up on the fantastic videos (and audio!) from this historic mission, don’t waste another second, check them out here:
- First, in full screen mode with your volume up, watch these very cool Perseverance entry, descent and landing and Ingenuity Helicopter animations on YouTube so you understand what’s happening as early videos and images come back from Mars. The first animation starts with the quiet arrival at Mars before slamming into the Martian atmosphere at about 20,000 kph (12,500 mph) to begin “7 minutes of terror”, ending with Perseverance in a cold, desolate Martian landscape. The second animation shows the deployment and first flight of Ingenuity (in a few weeks), our first flying drone on another planet…helicopters on Mars!
- Then watch the on-board views of descent and landing, including…
- Parachute deployment. BTW, within hours people online had deciphered the secret message hidden in the parachute markings: using binary numbers and ASCII code, it spells out DARE MIGHTY THINGS, a quote from Teddy Roosevelt and informal JPL credo, as well as some significant coordinates
- Heat shield jettison, after it protected the lander from atmospheric entry temperatures up to 1300 °C (2370 °F)
- Back shell (with parachute) separation from the rocket-powered Sky Crane
- Sky Crane lowering of the big, SUV-sized Perseverance rover to the surface
- Take your time browsing around the NASA Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover main site offering links to other images, videos, audio, animations and info
- Come back weekly to check out the latest Mars images sent back by Perseverance, including the public choice for Image of the Week
You might be wondering why we don’t get real-time 4K HD video streaming from Mars. After all, Perseverance has high-tech sensors and cameras, and clearly is able to send back cool images and videos. What it lacks is a broadband connection back to Earth. Think of it as your slow internet connection 20 years ago, when you could browse the early web and (slowly) download files, but today’s live HD video streaming was not an option. It takes a while for Perseverance to transmit data, images and video back to Earth, even going through the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and those signals take up to 20 minutes to reach us, even traveling through interplanetary space at the speed of light.
Go Perseverance and Ingenuity!
Moonday 