NASA’s mission trailer shows the Perseverance rover making a dramatic landing on Mars.
NASA JPL
NASA’s Perseverance rover is chilling in space, listening to its own heat dissipation fluid pump, while heading to Mars for a date of February 18, 2021, with fate. Landing is no joke. It is a fiery, charged and dangerous moment that will make or break the mission.
The space agency has released a “mission trailer” for Perseverance’s strike, descent, and landing or EDL operations. Set to soaring music and with some intense animations, it will have you running to your calendar and making a big red circle around February 18th next year.
The video shows what the end of the rover’s 300 million mile (470 million kilometers) journey will look like. The animation covers everything from the arrival to the deployment of the parachute to the actual landing as the rover is placed (hopefully carefully) on the surface of the red planet.
NASA will live coverage of the landing, although it won’t look like the Hollywood-style mission trailer for the arrival. Perseverance is equipped with an array of cameras to capture EDL, so we could end up with an incredible picture of the process.
Once on Mars, Perseverance embarks on a mission to look for signs of old life, fly a helicopter and collect rock and dust samples that NASA hopes to return to Earth one day. Yes, it is quite a problem.