{"id":13161,"date":"2021-02-22T20:06:36","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T20:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/?p=13161"},"modified":"2021-02-22T22:08:25","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T22:08:25","slug":"nasas-mars-perseverance-rover-provides-front-row-seat-to-landing-first-audio-recording-of-red-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/nasas-mars-perseverance-rover-provides-front-row-seat-to-landing-first-audio-recording-of-red-planet\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s Mars Perseverance Rover Provides Front-Row Seat to Landing, First Audio Recording of Red Planet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe title=\"NASA Releases Perseverance Rover Landing Video\" width=\"788\" height=\"443\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Bq5qaaY7RQE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The following is NASA press release 21-021 released February 22, 2021.<\/p>\n<p>New video from NASA\u2019s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover chronicles major milestones during the final minutes of its entry, descent, and landing (EDL) on the Red Planet on Feb. 18 as the spacecraft plummeted, parachuted, and rocketed toward the surface of Mars. A microphone on the rover also has provided the first audio recording of sounds from Mars.<\/p>\n<p>From the moment of parachute inflation, the camera system covers the entirety of the descent process, showing some of the rover\u2019s intense ride to Mars\u2019\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mars.nasa.gov\/news\/8549\/nasas-mars-2020-will-hunt-for-microscopic-fossils\/\">Jezero Crater<\/a>. The footage from high-definition cameras aboard the spacecraft starts 7 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\u2019s touchdown in the crater.<\/p>\n<p>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 and obtained sounds from Jezero Crater on Feb. 20. 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.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"NASA&#039;s Perseverance Rover Microphone Captures Sounds from Mars\" width=\"788\" height=\"443\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iJf6ZW4hfSo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor those who wonder how you land on Mars \u2013 or why it is so difficult \u2013 or how cool it would be to do so \u2013 you need look no further,\u201d said acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk. \u201cPerseverance 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Also released Monday was the mission\u2019s first panorama of the rover\u2019s landing location, taken by the two Navigation Cameras located on its mast. The six-wheeled robotic astrobiologist, the fifth rover the agency has landed on Mars, currently is undergoing an extensive checkout of all its systems and instruments.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis video of Perseverance\u2019s descent is the closest you can get to landing on Mars without putting on a pressure suit,\u201d said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science. \u201cIt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The world\u2019s most intimate view of a Mars landing begins about 230 seconds after the spacecraft entered the Red Planet\u2019s upper atmosphere at 12,500 mph (20,100 kph). The video opens in black, with the camera lens still covered within the parachute compartment. Within less than a second, the spacecraft\u2019s parachute deploys and transforms from a compressed 18-by-26 inch (46-by-66 centimeter) cylinder of nylon, Technora, and Kevlar into a fully inflated 70.5-foot-wide (21.5-meter-wide) canopy \u2013 the largest ever sent to Mars. The tens of thousands of pounds of force that the parachute generates in such a short period stresses both the parachute and the vehicle.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow we finally have a front-row view to what we call \u2018the seven minutes of terror\u2019 while landing on Mars,\u201d said Michael Watkins, director of NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the mission for the agency. \u201cFrom the explosive opening of the parachute to the landing rockets\u2019 plume sending dust and debris flying at touchdown, it\u2019s absolutely awe-inspiring.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The video also captures the heat shield dropping away after protecting Perseverance from scorching temperatures during its entry into the Martian atmosphere. The downward view from the rover sways gently like a pendulum as the descent stage, with Perseverance attached, hangs from the back shell and parachute. The Martian landscape quickly pitches as the descent stage \u2013 the rover\u2019s free-flying \u201cjetpack,\u201d which decelerates using rocket engines and then lowers the rover on cables to the surface \u2013 breaks free, its eight thrusters engaging to put distance between it and the now-discarded back shell and the parachute.<\/p>\n<p>Then, 80 seconds and 7,000 feet (2,130 meters) later, the cameras capture the descent stage performing the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mars.nasa.gov\/mars2020\/multimedia\/videos\/?v=458\">sky crane maneuver<\/a>\u00a0over the landing site \u2013 the plume of its rocket engines kicking up dust and small rocks that have likely been in place for billions of years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe put the EDL camera system onto the spacecraft not only for the opportunity to gain a better understanding of our spacecraft\u2019s performance during entry, descent, and landing, but also because we wanted to take the public along for the ride of a lifetime \u2013 landing on the surface of Mars,\u201d said Dave Gruel, lead engineer for Mars 2020 Perseverance\u2019s EDL camera and microphone subsystem at JPL. \u201cWe know the public is fascinated with Mars exploration, so we added the EDL Cam microphone to the vehicle because we hoped it could enhance the experience, especially for visually-impaired space fans, and engage and inspire people around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The footage ends with Perseverance\u2019s aluminum wheels making contact with the surface at 1.61 mph (2.6 kilometers per second), and then pyrotechnically fired blades sever the cables connecting it to the still-hovering descent stage. The descent stage then climbs and accelerates away in the preplanned flyaway maneuver.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf this were an old Western movie, I\u2019d say the descent stage was our hero riding slowly into the setting Sun, but the heroes are actually back here on Earth,\u201d said Matt Wallace, Mars 2020 Perseverance deputy project manager at JPL. \u201cI\u2019ve been waiting 25 years for the opportunity to see a spacecraft land on Mars. It was worth the wait. Being able to share this with the world is a great moment for our team.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Five commercial off-the-shelf cameras located on three different spacecraft components collected the imagery. Two cameras on the back shell, which encapsulated the rover on its journey, took pictures of the parachute inflating. A camera on the descent stage provided a downward view \u2013 including the top of the rover \u2013 while two on the rover chassis offered both upward and downward perspectives.<\/p>\n<p>The rover team continues its initial inspection of Perseverance\u2019s systems and its immediate surroundings. Monday, the team will check out five of the rover\u2019s seven instruments and take the first weather observations with the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mars.nasa.gov\/mars2020\/spacecraft\/instruments\/meda\/\">Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer<\/a>\u00a0instrument. In the coming days, a 360-degree panorama of Jezero by the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mars.nasa.gov\/news\/8663\/nasas-perseverance-rover-will-look-at-mars-through-these-eyes\/\">Mastcam-Z<\/a>\u00a0should be transmitted down, providing the highest resolution look at the road ahead.<\/p>\n<p><strong>More About the Mission<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A key objective of Perseverance&#8217;s mission on Mars is\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/astrobiology.nasa.gov\/\">astrobiology<\/a>, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet\u2019s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.<\/p>\n<p>Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.<\/p>\n<p>The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA\u2019s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/specials\/artemis\/\">Artemis<\/a>\u00a0missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.<\/p>\n<p>JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following is NASA press release 21-021 released February 22, 2021. New video from NASA\u2019s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover chronicles major milestones during the final minutes of its entry, descent, and landing (EDL) on the Red Planet on Feb. 18 as the spacecraft plummeted, parachuted, and rocketed toward the surface of Mars. A microphone on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13162,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","transcript_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,19],"tags":[491,489,72,1695],"class_list":{"0":"post-13161","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"category-space","9":"tag-jpl","10":"tag-mars","11":"tag-nasa","12":"tag-perseverance"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/2-22-2021-12-04-41-PM.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theblackvault.com\/documentarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}