After a long weekend with no updates or pictures from Rover’s Perseverance on Mars, NASA released a spectacular video reward on Monday, including unseen images that captured descent raises his hair on the surface of the red planet.
While the previous landers captured still images during the descent, which were later sewn together to form a kind of stop-action film, Perseverance was equipped with “refined” video cameras, available for the shelf, to record images of high resolution of the rover’s dive until it lands on the floor of Crater Lake.
Over the weekend, engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where Perseverance was built, disconnected 30 gigabytes of data from the rover, including 23,000 images and video frames. This allowed them to give the public a bird’s eye view of the landing on Mars.
“This is the first time we’ve been able to capture an event such as the landing of a spacecraft on Mars,” said JPL Director Michael Watkins. “We will learn something by looking at the vehicle’s performance in these videos. But many of them are also for bringing you on a journey, for our touch on Mars and, of course, for our surface mission. These are really amazing videos. “
NASA / JPL-Caltech
A camera mounted on the back of the Perseverance flying saucer aerial shell captured clear views of the 70.5-foot spacecraft’s parachute, unfolding in supersonic flow, swelling in half a second to act. like a 60,000-pound brake, slowing the boat from just under 1,000 mph to 200 mph calmer.
Equally spectacular views looking down showed the ground approaching below, while the 1-ton rover swayed slightly under the parachute. The rover then fell free and his rocket backpack was lit, guiding the ship to a safe landing place he had chosen earlier.
As the backpack lowered Perseverance to the surface, the exhaust panels from the vehicle’s eight engines lowered dust-swirling clouds that hid briefly on the lander. Then, with the wheels on the ground, the support cables were cut and a camera on Perseverance showed the backpack rising and flying out of sight.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
Along with the unprecedented video, NASA also released several surface photos showing the rover’s landing site in Jezero Crater, which once owned a 28-mile-wide lake fed by a river that deposited sediments in a wide delta. The rocks that mark the edge of that delta about 1.2 miles to the northwest can be clearly seen by the cameras of Perseverance.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
Deputy Project Director Matt Wallace said the idea of putting video cameras on board to document the rover’s entry, descent and landing came after he bought his daughter a small sports camera he was carrying in a harness in while practicing gymnastics.
“He flipped back and I don’t know about you, but I can’t flip back,” he said. “But when he showed me the video … I saw what it would be like if I could go back. And that was the moment he inspired a phone call to my friend (perseverance camera engineer) Dave Grohl, and that led to this system. “
Along with 25 cameras, the rover also carries two microphones. One failed to function during the descent, but the other caught the sounds of the Martian wind blowing past. NASA has released a snippet of sound taken from the rover’s microphone – the first sound ever recorded on another planet.
Launched in July last year, Perseverance reached Mars on Thursday, February 18, plunging into the atmosphere for a seven-minute descent.
The river and lake it fed about 3.5 billion years ago have long since disappeared, but scientists say the remnants of past microbial life, if there were such a life, could be preserved in the deposits of lake beds. . Perseverance is the first lander sent specifically to Mars to look for such “biosignatures” and to hide soil and rock samples for a possible return to Earth.
The descent of perseverance, like that of the Curiosity rover in front of it, is known as “seven minutes of terror” because of the extreme entrance environment and the countless events that must happen in time and without intervention on Earth to complete. a successful landing.
NASA / JPL / Caltech
Despite promises made before landing that “raw” images from the rover’s hazard avoidance cameras and others will be posted as they enter, less than half a dozen were released by Friday night and none appeared. in weekend.
This has raised concerns for space enthusiasts, but Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s scientific director, posted it on Twitter on Sunday, focusing on downloading videos and data from the board about the health of the rover’s systems.
“Since landing @NASAPersevere, we have prioritized two types of data: the first images of the rover’s entry, descent and landing. And the health and safety data for the rover and its subsystems,” he wrote on Twitter.
He later added: “I am so proud of this @NASAPersevere team because they worked so hard and diligently and were able to deliver things to us ahead of time, because I know the intense public interest.”