NASA has shared some never-before-seen footage from Mars!
For the first time on Monday, NASA shared “what it’s like to land on Mars.”
The Perseverance Mars Rover touched down on the red planet on Thursday, and the space agency shared images, video and audio that depict for the first time a spacecraft landing on Mars from multiple angles.
In the video, the parachute deploys as the rover enters the Martian atmosphere. As the rover descends toward the planet, the rocky surface comes into view.
“Your front-row seat to my Mars landing is here,” the agency wrote on the rover’s Twitter account.
The rover landed in the Jezero crater, which is a crater that is thought to have once been flooded with water, contributing to the formation of valley networks on Mars. The crater now contains rich clay soils, according to NASA.
“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, said in astatement.
“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.”
NASA Perseverance Rover.NASA
The landing also captured the first audio from Mars, including some Martian breeze and sounds of the “robot scientist” landing.
Over its mission time of one Mars year (which translates to about 687 Earth days), the Perseverance — NASA’s ninth mission to land on Mars — will collect rock and soil samples in the hopes of finding evidence of ancient life on Earth’s closest neighboring planet.
The Perseverance is “the biggest, heaviest, cleanest, and most sophisticated six-wheeled robot ever launched into space” according to NASA.
On Thursday, the unmanned rover — whichlaunched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Stationin Florida on July 30, inside the United Launch Alliance Atlas V 541 rocket — landed at 3:55 p.m. ET on the Jezero Crater, an area that NASApreviously saidthey believe could have been a “possible oasis in [the planet’s] distant past.”
NASA
The goals for the Mars endeavor are also to explore and analyze the geology of the planet’s environment to “assess ancient habitability.” Another desired outcome is to “demonstrate technology for future robotic and human exploration” to the planet.
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source: people.com
