Epic NASA Video Shows Perseverance Rover Landing On Mars In Amazing Detail

Last week, we witnessed NASA create history with the Perseverance rover landing on Mars. The mission was a challenging one with the most difficult part of the nearly seven-month-long journey being the landing on the Martian surface.

NASA

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Dubbed as the seven minutes of terror, the landing was the most challenging due to the landing location possessing treacherous terrain. However, due to a larger time lag in communication between Earth and Mars, NASA couldn¡¯t track the progress of landing until after it landed, which made the whole experience more harrowing. However, finally Perseverance did land successfully and the whole command centre cheered with glee.

During these few minutes, people online too could only visualize the landing in their mind and imagine what the experience would be like. But now, we won¡¯t have to do that anymore.

Perseverance had been recording its journey from the moment from the very beginning, and now NASA has shared the footage of how the seven minutes of terror turned out.

NASA

The video first shows the deployment of the parachute in the Martian atmosphere. After this, you notice the heat shield detach from the entire module and disappear on the Martian land. Soon after, you notice that the rover is making different manoeuvres to find the right spot to land at the Jezero crater.

Surprisingly, the entire process was automated meaning a human wasn¡¯t controlling it in the background. Dr Swati Mohan was calling out milestones of the NASA Perseverance Rover in a sort of live commentary of the entire descent and touchdown phase, and you can hear her voice in the video below:

Your front-row seat to my Mars landing is here. Watch how we did it.#CountdownToMars pic.twitter.com/Avv13dSVmQ

¡ª NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) February 22, 2021

Moments later you see the ground come closer and closer (like zooming in on a Google Earth image) and then soon after, the manoeuvring unit sends the rover and helicopter down and they have contact.

Acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk said in a statement ¡°For those who wonder how you land on Mars ¡ª or why it is so difficult ¡ª or how cool it would be to do so ¡ª you need look no further. 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 precision that is required to build and fly a vehicle to the Red Planet.¡±

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