Feb. 23, 2021 – It was cool enough hearing real time audio of NASA’s Perseverance rover landing on Mars on Feb. 18 but now NASA has synced video to the audio. It’s absolutely amazing! And the video is crystal clear. Some NASA engineers and scientists have worked for decades for this moment in space history.

Several cameras that were part of the rover’s entry, descent and landing suite captured the real footage, according to a NASA press release.

Mars landing
Engineers call the last few minutes before landing the “seven minutes of terror.” For the Feb. 18 landing, a parachute had to deploy to slow the rover’s speed as it descended to the Red Planet. Imagine being the engineers who designed and built the parachute and its systems. It could never be tested in the exact conditions the rover faced on Mars. So during the seven minutes of terror, when the NASA announcer said they had confirmed the parachute had deployed, there were a lot of happy people at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), the Earthly base for the Mars 2020 mission, and around the world.

In the NASA video released yesterday, from the moment of parachute inflation, the camera system covers the entirety of the descent process. It shows some of the rover’s intense ride to Mars’ Jezero Crater. The footage from high-definition cameras aboard the spacecraft starts seven miles (11 kilometers) above the surface, showing the supersonic deployment of the most massive parachute ever sent to another world, and ends with the rover’s touchdown in the crater.

A microphone attached to the rover did not collect usable data during the descent, but the commercial off-the-shelf device survived the highly dynamic descent to the surface. On Feb. 20, it obtained sounds from Jezero Crater. About 10 seconds into the 60-second recording, a Martian breeze is audible for a few seconds, as are mechanical sounds of the rover operating on the surface.

To listen to the audio, visit NASA.

“For those who wonder how you land on Mars – or why it is so difficult – or how cool it would be to do so – you need look no further,” Steve Jurczyk, acting NASA administrator, said in a press release. “Perseverance is just getting started, and already has provided some of the most iconic visuals in space exploration history. It reinforces the remarkable level of engineering and Word of the Day precision that is required to build and fly a vehicle to the Red Planet.”

According to NASA. the goals of the mission are to:: 1) determine whether life ever existed on Mars, 2) characterize the climate of Mars, 3) characterize the geology of Mars, and 4) prepare for Human Exploration on Mars.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

1. When the Mars 202 mission launch on its journey to Mars?

2. What are the goals for the mission?

3. How did the rover take the video of its own landing?

4. What is the purpose of the helicopter that is attached to the rover?

INQUIRY QUESTIONS

1. How do the high resoution images and video help NASA achieve one or more of its goals for the mission?

2. Before landing, the rover discarded its heat shield. Why do you think the heat shield was needed?

3. Why was the successful landing a significant “moment in space history?”