NASA has released incredible footage of the first rover landing on the surface on Tuesday. On 16 February, the Red Planet touched by perseverance and the footage containing this major milestone revealed the last moments of its entry, descent and descent, known as the EDL. Mars is also the first rover to record authentic sound using a microphone, which you can hear.
EDL often referred to as “7 minute terror”, it takes the rover about time to enter and land in the atmosphere. All strategies performed automatically without any input from the mission control. Mars is about 11 light-minutes away – it takes a radio signal to reach Earth from Mars in 11 minutes time – so we cannot wait for the decision to make on Earth right now.
The sacrifice begins about halfway through the ascent when, 230 seconds after entering the atmosphere, about 11 kilometers (7 miles) above the surface, the spacecraft places its parachute, slowing the spacecraft at subsonic speeds. The next highlight was the hitch down, which persevered as the Martian cut through the atmosphere. The ultimate highlight is the final 50 seconds, as the probe will see the Jezero crater where it is landing. Shortly afterwards, the celestial crane activates its rocket propulsion so that it can hover in place as it lowers the rover to the surface with the wire which is cut off as the perseverance touches the safe 2.6 kilometers (1.61 miles) per hour.
“Now that we finally land on Mars, we have a front-line view of what we call ‘seven-minute terror,'” said Michael Watkins, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where the agency’s mission conducted. “From the explosive opening of the parachute to the dust in the plumes of the landing rockets and the wreckage flying into the touchdown, it’s absolutely amazing.
The footage is remarkable in its own right, but it has enhanced by the presence of a solid microphone, which captured the first-of-its-kind audio recordings collected from another planet. Mix could not manage to get audio from the original descent but survived the EDL, capturing the words of Jezero Crater on 20 February. It really lives at home that Mars is a truly complete planet there, and humanity has been able to populate it by scientific instruments.
“We didn’t use the EDL camera system just to get a better understanding of our spacecraft’s performance during entry, landing and landing, because we wanted to take the public along a lifetime journey – landing on the surface of Mars,” said JPL’s 2020 Perceived EDL camera and Said Dave Gruel, chief engineer of the microphone subsystem. “We know the public is fascinated by exploring Mars, so we’ve added an EDL cam microphone to the car because we hope it can enhance the experience, especially for fans of visually impaired space, and engage and inspire people around the world.”
Over the next couple of days, NASA will release a high-profile image of Jezero Crater, the firm’s new home. This will give the rover still the best look at where it is going to search for signs of past microbial life. “For those of you landing on Mars – or why it’s so hard – or how cool it will be – you don’t have to look any further,” said Steve Jurczyk, NASA’s Acting Administrator. The visuals provided it reinforces the significant level of engineering and precision required to build and fly vehicles on a Red Planet.”
