Tweet
Perseverance, NASA’s latest rover to head to Mars, landed successfully on the Red Planet about 3:55 Eastern on Thursday, ushering in a new era of Mars exploration for the space agency. Perseverance, which launched in July 2020, carries a lot more scientific equipment and instruments than its sibling Curiosity, which landed on Mars in 2012. Included in that equipment is a way of collecting samples to be sent back to Earth, as well as a Mars first: A helicopter!
The aerial acrobatics performed by the rover during landing included a super-sonic dive through the atmosphere, the deployment of the largest supersonic parachute to ever be deployed on another planet, the use of radar to determine an appropriate landing spot, a rocket-powered-descent to just over the surface (after disconnecting from the parachute), and a perilous sky crane final twenty-meter drop from the rocket platform to the surface of the planet. After Percy (a nickname given the rover) touches down, the rocket-powered sky crane will fly away to crash somewhere else on the planet’s surface.