LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – NASA scientists presented striking early images of the stunning landing of the Mars rover Perseverance on Friday, including a selfie of the six-wheeled vehicle dangling just above the surface of the Red Planet just before landing.
The color photo, which is likely to become an instant classic among memorable images from space travel history, was taken by a camera mounted on the rocket-powered “Sky Crane” descent just above the rover as the space vehicle became the size of a car. transported. Thursday lowered to Mars soil.
The image was revealed by mission managers during an online newslettering webcast from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles less than 24 hours after landing.
The photo, looking down on the rover, shows the entire vehicle suspended from three cables that are not spooled to the air valve, along with an “umbilical” communication cable. Dust vortices shot up by the crane’s rocket thrusters are also visible.
Seconds later, the rover was carefully planted on its wheels, its cords were cut, and the overhead crane – the work was done – flew away to crash at a safe distance, but not before photos and other data collected during its descent to the robber in custody.
The image of the dangling science lab, which stands out for its clarity and sense of movement, marks the first such close-up photo of a spacecraft landing on Mars or another planet off Earth.
“This is something we’ve never seen before,” Aaron Stehura, a deputy chief of the mission’s descent and landing team, describes himself and his colleagues as “impressed” when he first saw the photo.
IMMEDIATELY ICONIC
Adam Steltzner, chief engineer on the Perseverance project at JPL, said he immediately found the image iconic, similar to the recording of Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the moon in 1969, or the Voyager 1 probe’s images of Saturn in 1980.
He said the viewer is connected to a historical moment that represents years of work by thousands of individuals.
‘You are brought to the surface of Mars. You’re sitting there, twenty feet from the surface of the robber, looking down, ”he said. “It’s absolutely thrilling, and it is reminiscent of those other images from our experience as human beings entering our solar system.”
The photo was taken at the end of the so-called “seven minutes of terror” descent sequence that took Perseverance from the top of Mars’ atmosphere, at a speed of 12,000 miles per hour, to a soft landing on the floor of a huge basin called the Jezero Crater.
Next week, NASA hopes to showcase more photos and video – some possibly with audio – taken by all six cameras mounted on the descending spacecraft, showing more of the aerial crane maneuvers, as well as the supersonic parachute deployment that preceded it.
Pauline Hwang, strategic mission manager, said the rover itself “is doing great and healthy on the surface of Mars, and still very functional and great.”
The vehicle landed about two kilometers from high cliffs at the base of an ancient river delta carved into the corner of the crater billions of years ago, when Mars was warmer, wetter, and presumably hospitable to live.
Scientists say the site is ideal for pursuing Perseverance’s primary goal: to search for fossil traces of microbial life preserved in sediments believed to have been deposited around the delta and the long-vanished lake that once fed it .
Rock samples drilled from the soil of Mars are to be stored on the surface for eventual reclamation and delivery to Earth by two future robotic missions to the Red Planet, as early as 2031.
Another color photo published Friday, taken moments after the rover’s arrival, shows a rocky terrain around the landing site and what resemble the delta cliffs in the distance.
The mission’s surface team will spend the next few days and weeks detaching, deploying and testing the vehicle’s robotic arm, communication antennas and other equipment, aligning instruments and upgrading the rover’s software, Hwang said.
She said it would take about nine sols, or Mars days, for the rover to be ready for its first test drive.
Before looking for signs of microbial life, one of Perseverance’s jobs is to deploy a miniature helicopter he has transported to Mars for an unprecedented alien test flight. But Hwang said that effort was still about two months away.
Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Daniel Wallis