NASA launched Perseverance on, Jan. 30th, 2020 from Titusville, Florida. Perseverance is the most advanced rover ever sent into space and has successfully landed in a crater on Mars to search for signs of life.
Over the 144 million-mile journey from Earth to Mars, Perseverance’s trip was a quiet one, until entering the atmosphere.
The period of time between entering the atmosphere and touching onto martian soil was referred to as the seven-minutes of terror. In this time Perseverance would have to decelerate over 12,000mph in order to land.
It accomplished this by using a heat shield to prevent it from burning in the atmosphere, a parachute to catch the wind and slow the descent, and deployed a jetpack connected by a 60-foot-long cable, that flew far away after Perseverance landed on Mars’ surface.
This process was executed flawlessly.
Packed with new cameras and a drone, Perseverance is expected to send us high-definition photos of Mars’ landscape.
Perseverance touches onto Martian Soil (NASA)