Just a reminder that these are engineering images and far better ones will be coming soon, including a video of the landing with sound!
NASA successfully landed its Perseverance rover and on the surface of Mars in the Jezero Crater at 18 February 2021 at 20:56 UTC. Mars 2020 is the latest mission in NASA's Mars Exploration Program and Perseverance will investigate the surface geological processes and history of the Red Planet. This will include an assessment of its past habitability, the possibility of past life on Mars, and the potential for preservation of biosignatures within accessible geological materials. It will cache sample containers along its route for retrieval by a potential future Mars sample-return mission. Perseverance is accompanied by the Ingenuity helicopter drone, which will attempt the first powered flight on any planet beyond Earth as a technological demonstration.
NASA Resources
- Mars 2020 Mission
- About the Perseverance Rover
- About the Ingenuity helicopter drone (Veritasium: Mars Helicopter)
- Instruments
- Watch the Simulated Landing
Media Coverage
- New York Times: NASA Lands Its Perseverance Rover on Mars
- BBC: Mars landing: Nasa Perseverance rover touches down
- CNN: Perseverance rover lands on Mars
- NPR: 'I'm Safe On Mars,' NASA'S New Rover To Scour Ancient Lake Bed For Life Signs
- Space.com: Touchdown! NASA's Perseverance rover lands on Mars to begin hunt for signs of ancient life
This is the official r/space megathread for the rover landing, you're encouraged to direct posts about the mission to this thread, although if it's important breaking news it's fine to post on the main subreddit if others haven't already.
#Details
Today, at 3:55pm EST / 8:55pm UTC, NASA's most advanced Mars rover yet will touchdown in Jezero Crater. Perseverance's goal is to search for evidence of past life on Mars. To do that, it'll carry the most advanced suite of scientific instruments to ever study another planet, and it'll also store the most interesting rock samples for a future robotic mission to return to Earth.
The landing will be very similar to Curiosity's. In these '7 minutes of terror', Perseverance will employ a heatshield, the largest parachute ever flown and a retro-rocket 'jetpack' to slow its speed from 20,000 kph to 3 kph at touchdown. This CGI video from NASA shows how complex, exciting and challenging the entirely automated landing will be.
If all goes well, we should get immediate confirmation of a successful touchdown and perhaps the first images from the rover in the following minutes
#How to watch the landing
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Spanish-language livestream (YouTube), live at 2:30pm EST
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This NASA page has links to its livestreams on other platforms like Facebook and Twitch
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Link which tells you the landing time in your timezone
#>> LANDING SUCCESS!!! <<
Here is a real-time simulation from NASA, which accurately shows the probe's position and manoeuvres from now until touchdown.
Thurs, Feb 18 🇺🇸 11:15am PT / 2:15pm ET 🇧🇷 4:15pm Rio 🇬🇧 7:15pm 🇿🇦 9:15pm 🇷🇺 10:15pm (Moscow) 🇦🇪 11:15pm
Fri, Feb 19 🇮🇳 12:45am 🇨🇳 3:15am 🇯🇵 4:15am 🇦🇺 6:15am AEDT
Tweet
>Cavs Jarrett Allen without any other context:
"I'm a huge space guy." Says he rushed home from practice to watch coverage of the Mars landing.
But he provides no spacing 🤔🤔 /s
whatup, Reddit. this is skiz, reporting live from nyc. i figured it’d be cool to connect with you and answer some questions. i’ve been feeling the love and want to reciprocate it.
i just put out a single, “Pro Bad Decision Maker” that you should peep : https://independent.ffm.to/probaddecisionmaker and i have an album on the way.
thank you all for being here and i’m looking forward to this
https://twitter.com/SkizzyMars
Proof: https://i.redd.it/z96bpp7bfoh61.jpg
