NASA has released a multi-screen video of its new roverboi dropping onto the planet from space into a future McDonald’s parking lot.
Perseverance was launched from NASA’s Florida station on 20 July 2020 and landed in the Jezero crater on 18 February 2021. Its $2 billion mission? To find some evidence of previous microbial existence and evaluate local conditions for human habitation. I guess it probably involves a lot of boring rock samples, but that’s how most of the movies start too. Next thing you know, xenomorphs.
Your front-row seat to my Mars landing is here. Watch how we did it.#CountdownToMars pic.twitter.com/Avv13dSVmQ
— NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) February 22, 2021
This is the first time NASA has been able to capture video of a vehicle landing event, with seven cameras installed on Perseverance just to record the rover’s approximately seven-minute descent from orbit to the Martian surface. According to the space agency, over 30GBs of data and 23,000 images have subsequently been compiled from the video, but presumably no xenomorphs. Not yet, I mean.