The successful Mars landing of the rover Perseverance on February 18 provides the US with the chance to accomplish several firsts.
This includes a drone helicopter flight on another planet, access to an ancient river delta that may yield microbial fossils and the most exciting feat of all for the internet age: high-definition video of touchdown on another planet.
The third is now a reality, after Nasa released the stunning video Monday following a big social media build-up at the weekend.
The video clip, lasting three minutes and 25 seconds, showed the deployment of the parachute and the rover's touchdown on the surface of Mars in a cloud of dust.
"These are really amazing videos," Michael Watkins, director of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said at a briefing for reporters. "This is the first time we've ever been able to capture an event like the landing on Mars."
The so-called seven minutes of terror from the top of Mars’s atmosphere to the surface is a perilous flight at best—with extreme heat, crushing gravitational forces caused by extreme deceleration from over 19,000 kilometres per hour, and a complex series of maneuvers that had to go just right for the rover, which weighs about 1,000 kilograms, to settle on to the red planet at a gentle 2.9kph.
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NASA's Mars Perseverance rover as it acquired this image using its onboard Left Navigation Camera (Navcam). AFP -
NASA's Mars Perseverance rover using its Left Mastcam-Z camera (a pair of cameras located high on the rover's mast). AFP -
NASA's Mars Perseverance rover as it acquired this image using its onboard Right Navigation Camera (Navcam) on Mars. AFP -
The surface of Mars directly below NASA's Mars Perseverance rover, seen using the rover's down-look camera. Nasa / JPL-Caltech / Reuters -
The surface of Mars directly below Nasa's Mars Perseverance rover, seen using the rover's down-look camera. Nasa / JPL-Caltech / Reuters -
The surface of Mars directly below Nasa's Mars Perseverance rover, seen using the rover's down-look camera. Nasa / JPL-Caltech / Reuters -
The surface of Mars directly below Nasa's Mars Perseverance rover, seen using the rover's down-look camera. Nasa / JPL-Caltech / Reuters -
The surface of Mars directly below Nasa's Mars Perseverance rover, seen using the rover's down-look camera. Nasa / JPL-Caltech / Reuters -
The surface of Mars directly below Nasa's Mars Perseverance rover, seen using the rover's down-look camera. Nasa / JPL-Caltech / Reuters -
The surface of Mars directly below Nasa's Mars Perseverance rover, seen using the rover's down-look camera. Nasa / JPL-Caltech / Reuters -
The surface of Mars directly below Nasa's Mars Perseverance rover, seen using the rover's down-look camera. Nasa / JPL-Caltech / Reuters -
The surface of Mars directly below Nasa's Mars Perseverance rover, seen using rover's down-look camera. Nasa / JPL-Caltech / Reuters -
A Nasa illustration shows a diagram added over the 21-metre parachute deployed during the descent of the Perseverance rover to Mars. Systems engineer Ian Clark used binary code to spell out 'Dare Mighty Things' in the orange and white strips. Nasa / JPL-Caltech / AP -
The Perseverance rover descends to the surface of Mars. A key objective of Perseverance's mission on Mars is to search for signs of ancient microbial life. Nasa / JPL-Caltech / EPA -
The heatshield drifts away following separation from Nasa's Perseverence rover, during its descent to Mars. Nasa / JPL-Caltech / EPA -
A close-up of Nasa's Perseverance rover during its descent to Mars. The rover will gather data on the planet's geology and past climate, paving the way for human exploration of the Red Planet. Nasa / JPL-Caltech / EPA -
Martian dust swirls up as Nasa's Perseverance rover descends to the surface of the Red Planet. The mission aims to be the first to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith. Nasa / JPL-Caltech / EPA -
The 21-metre parachute attached to Nasa's Perseverance rover begins to open to slow down the descent to Mars. Nasa / JPL-Caltech / EPA -
A portion of a panorama made up of individual images taken by the navigation cameras aboard Nasa's Perseverance rover reveal the Martian landscape. Nasa / JPL-Caltech / Reuters
The craft had travelled about 470 million kilometres since its July 30 launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the US.
In the past, the final descent was observed purely within the domain of computer graphics and animation.
For Perseverance, however, the agency stowed upward-facing, high-definition video cameras and a microphone to record this most dangerous phase of the journey, both for the engineering insight and the enormous public interest in witnessing video of a Mars touchdown.
On Friday, Nasa released a still image of the rover being lowered on its rocket-powered “sky crane”—another first for the US space agency.
But now, there’s video. The film was made with six “ruggedised” commercial cameras, one of which failed when an on-board mortar fired to deploy the parachute. Nasa collected 23,000 images during the rover's entry, descent and landing phase and 30GB of data.
Jessica Samuels, Perseverance's surface mission manager, said the rover was operating as expected so far.
"I am happy to report that Perseverance is healthy," Ms Samuels said.
