Incredible new footage shared by Perseverance rover after Mars landing

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The rover also made beautiful postcards of its landing site.

The first image shared at a NASA press conference on Friday was “exhilarating” to the team when they received it. It shows the rover approaching the Martian surface during entry, descent and landing. A camera on the spaceship’s descent scene captured the perspective, which was not possible in previous missions.

“This photo taken by a camera of my ‘jetpack’ captures me in flight, just before my wheels hit the ground,” according to a tweet from Perseverance Twitter account. “The moment my team has dreamed of for years, now a reality. Dare the powerful things.”

Small plumes of dust can be seen rising from the Martian surface, stirred by the engines that land the rover when it was only 6.5 feet above the surface.

“The team is overwhelmed with excitement and joy at having successfully landed another rover on the surface of Mars,” said Adam Steltzner, the rover’s chief engineer. “When we make such investments, we are making them for humanity, and we are making them as a gesture of our humanity.”

The joy of celebrating the landing of a rover on Mars

Steltzner cited iconic space images from the Apollo mission, such as Buzz Aldrin on the surface of the moon, Voyager’s first image of Saturn and the impressive “Pillars of Creation” photo from the Hubble Space Telescope.

“We can only hope, in our efforts to design spaceships and explore our solar system, that we may be able to contribute yet another iconic image to this collection, and I’m happy to say that I hope that ‘today we can with that. “

While the first images returned by the rover on Thursday night were black and white glimpses showing it landed safely on Mars, the color images made available on Friday show the characteristic red color of the Martian surface.

This is the first color image published by Perseverance on the Martian surface.

“An open horizon, with so much to explore. I can’t wait to get started,” the Perseverance account tweeted.

Rocks are also scattered across the flat surface of the landing site in Jezero Crater, but they are small compared to the rover’s large wheels.

The rocks spotted by the rover have holes in them, which makes scientists curious to see what would cause them.

Another tweet with the image read, “I love rocks. Look at them right next to my wheel. Are they volcanic or sedimentary? What story do they tell? I can’t wait to find out.”

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera, which flew over the landing site as Perseverance arrived for a landing, captured an incredible sight as the spacecraft’s parachutes opened.

HiRISE captured this image of Perseverance on its way to the landing site.
“The beauty of the flight! HiRISE captured this image of @NASAPersevere en route to the landing site over 700 km (435 mi) away!” the HiRISE Account tweeted.

“If you look below the little circle, that was our eventual touchdown point,” said Aaron Stehura, deputy phase manager for entry, descent and landing. “You can see it’s near the delta of the river that we talked about.”

The Perseverance rover successfully landed on Mars and returned its first images

Perseverance landed about 2 km from the river delta in the Jezero Crater, which was home to a lake 3.9 billion years ago. The rover will spend the next two years investigating the crater and delta for evidence of ancient life that may have existed when Mars was a more habitable place.



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