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| NASA Mars mission |
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| NASA Mars mission |
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| NASA Mars mission |
nothing can be taken for granted when you get to mars there's a lot of things we just don't know space always has a way of throwing us curveballs and surprising us i mean until we get the data that says we're on the ground safely i'm gonna be worried that we're not gonna make it entry descent and landing is often referred to as the seven minutes of terror because it takes about seven minutes to get from the top of the atmosphere of mars to the ground safely the spacecraft has to do all of this by itself there are many things that have to go right to get perseverance onto the ground safely there's a lot counting on this this is the first leg of our sample return relay race there's a lot of work on the line starting about 10 minutes before atmospheric entry we get rid of really the spacecraft part of of the rover that's been supporting us we come screaming in to the martian atmosphere at 12 to 13 000 miles per hour and the heat shield is what dissipates all that initial energy through friction the vehicle will continue actually flying itself through the atmosphere it's sort of like a transforming vehicle that went from spacecraft and now it's kind of like an aircraft actively guiding itself when we're going slow enough we deploy a parachute the biggest supersonic parachute we've ever sent to another planet it's critical for slowing down the vehicle perseverance entry descent and landing borrows heavily from that of curiosity but fundamentally perseverance is a different rover she's bigger she has different instruments we've added a lot of smarts on the inside to make it more capable so that it can deal with the landing site that we've given the science team identified jezreel crater as basically an ancient lake bed and one of the most promising places to look for evidence of ancient microbial life and to collect samples for future return to earth the problem is it's a much more hazardous place to land you look at jezreel all you see is danger how do we go to a site that we never thought was safe enough to go to before so the heat shield which has protected us all the way through entry is no longer necessary we need to get that off so that we can actually see the ground and we can see the ground in a couple different ways perseverance will be the first mission to use terrain relative navigation so while it's descending on the parachute it will actually be taking images of the surface of mars and determining where to go based on what it sees this is finally like landing with your eyes open having this new technology really allows perseverance to land in much more challenging terrain than curiosity or any previous mars mission could amongst the rocks and the craters and the cliffs these things are hazardous to the rover but these are the things that are interesting to the scientists once perseverance has figured out where she is we jettison the back shell and parachute and light up our rockets those rockets help us steer to a safe landing spot that's nearby that descent stage takes us all the way down to about 20 meters off the ground that's when we start the skycrane maneuver [Music] once the rover has hit the ground the descent stage will cut loose from the rover and fly away to a safe distance surviving that seven minutes is really just the beginning for perseverance its job right being the first leg of sample return to go look for those signs of past life on mars all that can't start until we get perseverant safely to the ground and then that's when the real mission begins
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