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Carrying five cameras from San Diego, NASA’s Perseverance rover on Thursday survived a wild descent through Mars’ atmosphere and safely landed in a wide crater to begin its search for ancient signs of life.
The spacecraft used the friction of the atmosphere, retrorockets and a parachute to slow down, and was guided into Jezero Crater by a suite of navigational instruments, including a camera built by Malin Space Science Systems of Sorrento Valley.
The $2.4 billion Perseverance landed on Mars at 12:55 p.m. Pacific time, and began transmitting landing photos to Earth less than 15 minutes later.
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Malin also provided four other cameras that will help the rover to slowly roll across an ancient lake bed and carry out a robust science mission that includes drilling into the surface of Mars. The crater covers roughly the same distance between San Diego and Alpine, and it has a hostile environment. At times, the temperature drops to minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit.