NASA shows video of Mars rover Perseverance landing
NASA shared a video of the Perseverance landing. The Mars rover landed safely on the surface of Mars last Thursday. NASA already shared several photos of the descent last week but did not show moving images before.
NASA shared the images during an extensive press conference on YouTube, in which it shows the landing from various camera perspectives. These images are then discussed by employees of the organization. It is the first time that NASA has been able to capture videos of a Mars landing. The landing video itself takes about 3.5 minutes and can also be viewed separately , without an explanation from NASA.
The video does not contain audio; Perseverance has a microphone, but according to the space agency it has not provided usable audio. Now that the rover has arrived on Mars, it can record audio again; NASA released the first audio clips captured on the planet this week .
The video begins about 230 seconds after the Mars rover enters the planet’s upper atmosphere at a speed of 20,100 kilometers per hour. The video shows, among other things, the expansion of the parachute, which is about 21.5 meters wide after deploying. The landing video also captures the collapse of the heat shield, which was used to protect Perseverance from the temperatures during its arrival in Mars’ atmosphere.
It also shows the sky crane landing and the Martian surface at the time of arrival. The video ends from that last perspective, where the wheels of Perseverance hit the planet’s surface. The entire landing process took about seven “horror minutes.” The space agency previously shared photos of the landing .
During the live stream, NASA employees further discussed several videos and images that Perseverance captured during its early days on the red planet. NASA has now received more than 30GB of landing data from the Mars rover. This would include ‘thousands’ of images. Perseverance has captured several images and panoramas of the Martian surface, some of which have been published on NASA’s website.
Perseverance launched in July 2020 and arrived last Thursday. The rover has been on its way to the red planet for about six months. The Mars rover will conduct soil research in the Jezero crater on that planet; NASA hopes to find signs of life from the past here. Perseverance will have to collect samples from the Martian soil in the coming years, which should arrive on Earth in 2031.