At a briefing on the status of the Mars Perseverance rover, NASA unveiled a stunning video of the rovers descent and landing. It’s a type of view we’ve never seen before on any spacecraft descending to the Red planet.
“This video of Perseverance’s descent is the closest you can get to landing on Mars without putting on a pressure suit,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science. “It should become mandatory viewing for young women and men who not only want to explore other worlds and build the spacecraft that will take them there, but also want to be part of the diverse teams achieving all the audacious goals in our future.”
“Now we finally have a front-row view to what we call ‘the seven minutes of terror’ while landing on Mars,” said Michael Watkins, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the mission for the agency. “From the explosive opening of the parachute to the landing rockets’ plume sending dust and debris flying at touchdown, it’s absolutely awe-inspiring.”
NASA also released the first panorama of the rovers landing location which was taken by its two navigation cameras on its mast.
NASA also released the first audio recording of the mission.