NASA has just released the first videos of the Perseverance rover at a press conference, showing the most important landmarks during the final minutes of its entry, descent and landing on the Red Planet on February 18, when the spacecraft is parachuted toward the surface of Mars. A microphone on the rover has also provided the first audio recording of sounds from Mars.
From the moment the parachute was launched, the camera system covered the entire descent process, showing part of the rover’s intense journey to the Jezero crater on Mars. The footage from the high-definition cameras on board the spacecraft begins 11 kilometers above the surface, showing the supersonic deployment of the most massive parachute ever sent to another world, and ends with the rover landing in the crater.
One of the microphones attached to the rover did not collect usable data during the descent, but the device survived the descent to the surface and obtained sounds from Jezero crater on February 20. In the second recording, a Martian breeze can be heard for a few seconds, as can the mechanical sounds of the rover operating on the surface.
The first panorama of the rover’s landing location has also been published, taken by the two navigation cameras located on its mast. The six-wheeled robotic astrobiologist, the fifth rover the agency has landed on Mars, is currently conducting a comprehensive review of all its systems and instruments.
Seven minutes of terror
“Now we finally have a front-row view of what we call ‘the seven minutes of terror’ as we land on Mars,” according to Michael Watkins, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the mission. from the agency. ” From the explosive opening of the parachute to the plume of the rockets that land sending dust and debris upon landing, it is absolutely impressive .”
The video also captures the heat shield falling after protecting Perseverance from scorching temperatures as it entered the Martian atmosphere. The view down from the rover swings gently like a pendulum while the descent stage. The Martian landscape looms fast as the descent stage progresses, the rover’s free-flying jetpack , which decelerates using rocket engines and then cables down to the surface, is released and its eight thrusters are activated to put distance between. the rover and the terrain. The back cover and parachute are discarded.
Then, 80 seconds and 2,130 meters later, the cameras capture the descent stage performing the maneuver of the aerial crane over the landing site: the column of its rocket engines kicking up dust and small rocks that have probably remained in that same place during billions of years.
“We placed the EDL camera system on the spacecraft not only to give us the opportunity to better understand the performance of our spacecraft during entry, descent and landing, but also because we wanted to take the public on the journey of a lifetime: the landing on the surface of Mars ”, in the words of Dave Gruel, principal engineer of the EDL camera and microphone subsystem of Mars 2020 Perseverance.
The footage ends with Perseverance’s aluminum wheels making contact with the surface at 2.6 kilometers per second; then pyrotechnically fired blades cut the cables connecting it to the still suspended lowering stage. Finally, the descent stage ascends and accelerates in the previously planned flight maneuver.
Five commercially available commercial cameras located on three different components of the spacecraft collected the images. Two cameras on the rear shell, encapsulating the rover on its journey, took pictures of the parachute inflating. One camera on the descent stage provided a downward view, including the top of the rover, while two on the rover chassis offered both upward and downward perspectives.
The rover team continues with the initial inspection of Perseverance’s systems and its immediate surroundings. In the next few days, a 360-degree panorama of Jezero should be broadcast on the Mastcam-Z, providing a higher resolution view of the road ahead of the rover.
