NASA has released a video of the Mars Explorer Perseverance. The images show how the huge parachute unfolds and the robotic jeep descends to the planet, ejecting the heat shield. The Perseverance then lowered to the ground via a pulley system.
The robot landed on Mars last Thursday. On Friday, photos were already sent to Earth and now there are also images of the landing on the red planet.
Never before have such images been made by a Mars robot. “This video is unbelievable,” NASA manager Mike Watkins told the German news agency DPA. “We all watched the footage many times last weekend.”
This is what Perseverance’s landing on Mars looked like:
The video shows the last eleven kilometers of the route. These were exciting moments for the NASA navigation team. The images show the rocky surface of the planet.
There are not only cameras on board the Perseverance, but also microphones. During the landing, they did not broadcast any useful data, NASA reports. But after the landing, the first sound recordings of the surface of Mars were received. The recordings contain sound of something that sounds like a gust of wind.
According to the latest data sent by the rover to Earth, the equipment appears to be working fine, NASA experts say. The robot car is packed with numerous measuring instruments and has a drill with which it can take soil samples and put them in tubes for transport to earth. For the next two years, Perseverance will be conducting research on Mars.