NASA shared its official, incredible video of his Perseverance rover landing on Mars.
The Navigation Cameras, or Navcams, aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover captured this view of the rover’s deck on Feb. 20, 2021.
The videos cover the closing minutes of the hair-raising descent last week, up until the stage when the robot's wheels landed on the surface.
The scenes show a bite of dust and grit being stirred up as the spacecraft is dropped to the Jezero Crater floor by its rocket backpack.
Perseverance was sent to Mars with cameras trained on it, seven of which were committed to capturing the landing.
Their imaging represents engineers' crucial input as they attempt to further refine the technology used to position probes on the Red Planet's surface.
At NASA's Jet Propulsion Facility in California, task teams retrieved 30 gigabytes of data and over 23,000 vehicle images falling to the surface. Among the 4,500 photos that NASA intended to release on Monday were the videos.
Now that you’ve seen Mars, hear it. Grab some headphones and listen to the first sounds captured by one of my microphones. 🎧https://t.co/JswvAWC2IP#CountdownToMars
— NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) February 22, 2021
Last week, Perseverance packed with a defensive shield and a descent stage named the Skycrane, which fired rocket thrusters to delay its descent near the planet reached Mars' atmosphere.
The package sported four cameras to record the landing series. One is fixed on its defensive backshell facing outward, one on the descent stage, and two on either side of the rover. Together, they caught a few amazing views of the descent of the spaceship.
The four cameras were provided by the imaging firm FLIR, and NASA made few or no changes to them. Dave Gruel, the lead engineer for Mars 2020's EDL Camera Device, said at the press conference per The Verge that the same camera could be bought off the internet.
A microphone onboard Perseverance recorded vibrations. It captured noise from the rover itself and, in the distance, the gentle sound of wind on Mars.
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Dave Gruel, head of the entry and descent camera team, said per PBS.org: "It gives me goosebumps every time I see it, just amazing."
Last Thursday and Friday, the data began coming through NASA's Deep Space Network. At the same time, the team pored over data on the spacecraft's health.
Perseverance Kicks off Elaborate Effort to Bring Mars Rocks to Earth
The Perseverance team is looking forward to analyzing Mars' data as the rover settles at its Jezero Crater landing spot. This former lake may hold proof of past existence about 3.5 billion years ago.
The Mars Sample Return mission would include two additional rocket launches from Earth, officially planned for 2026 and 2031, Smithsonian.org reported. One rocket launch from Mars, which may become another planet's first launch.
The project would have the first cache of rock samples from another world if the operation becomes successful and information on where, where, and how they were obtained. The mission would culminate in the crash-landing of samples on the Utah Research and Training Range mudflats. Earth scientists would also be able to scour the samples for information regarding the Red Planet's atmosphere, geological past, and visible life signals.
An international panel of scientists published a paper over thirty years ago that first detailed their participation in a Mars sample return project over thirty years ago. The scientific community realized then that, given an interplanetary mission, a fast grab-and-go mission for one sample would not be worthwhile on Mars. NASA and the European Space Agency said in a SpaceNews report last July that it will cost about $7 billion.
NASA and the European Space Agency have not yet agreed about how the Mars samples would be circulated to the science world. As Apollo explorers took back artifacts from the moon, NASA adopted ideas for science ventures focused on moon rock from scientists worldwide.
These projects have shed light on the moon's magnetic field's existence and death, the origin of the moon and Mars, and the past of weathering space over billions of years.
ALSO READ: NASA's Perseverance Rover Finally Lands on Mars
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