Image of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, captures perseverance as it parachuted down through the atmosphere
Washington:
NASA released stunning new photos of Perseverance on Friday, including one of the rover being gently brought to the surface of Mars by a series of cables, the first time such an image has been captured.
The high-resolution photo was taken from a video taken during the descent of the spacecraft that carried the rover from Earth.
At that point, the descent phase used its six-engine jetpack to decelerate to a speed of approximately 2.7 kilometers per hour as part of the “skycrane maneuver”, the final stage of the landing.
The moment my team dreamed of for years, now a reality. Dare to do mighty things. #CountdownToMarspic.twitter.com/8SgV53S9KG
– NASA’s Persistence Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) February 19, 2021
“You can see the dust blown up by the rover’s engines,” said Adam Steltzner, Perseverance’s chief engineer, who estimated the shot was taken about two meters above the ground.
The three straight lines are mechanical bridles that hold the rover under the downhill stairs, while the coiled cable was used to send the data from the cameras to Perseverance.
When the rover landed, it cut 6.4 meters of cables, allowing the descent stairs to fly away for its own safe landing.
Another new image, taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows persistence as it parachuted through the atmosphere at hundreds of miles per hour.
Perseverance has also been able to upload its first high-resolution color photo of the flat area it landed on in the Jezero Crater, where a river and deep lake existed billions of years ago.
A second color image shows one of the rover’s six wheels, with several honeycomb stones next to it that are believed to be more than 3.6 billion years old.
“One of the questions we’ll ask first is whether these rocks represent volcanic or sedimentary origin,” said NASA deputy project scientist Katie Stack Morgan.
Volcanic rock, in particular, can be dated with very high precision once the samples are returned to Earth on a future return mission
Volcanic rock, in particular, can be dated with very high precision once the samples are returned to Earth on a future return mission – an exciting development from a planetary scientific perspective.
When the first images came in, “it was exciting, the team went wild,” said Pauline Hwang, Mission Operations System manager.
“The science team immediately started looking at all those rocks, zoomed in and said, ‘What’s that!’ – it couldn’t have been better. “
The first two images were released shortly after the rover landed on Thursday, but they were in a lower resolution and black and white due to the limited data rate available.
NASA hopes to have more high-resolution photos and videos in the coming days, but doesn’t know yet if it successfully recorded sound on Mars for the first time using microphones.
That may be announced later this weekend or early next week, Steltzner said.
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