NASA Offers Opportunities for Media to Engage with Mars Perseverance Rover Landing
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WASHINGTON, Feb. 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ NASA will host virtual news briefings, live shows, and activities the week of Feb. 15 to discuss events surrounding the landing of its Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. Landing on the Red Planet will occur about 3:55 p.m. EST Thursday, Feb. 18. Live landing commentary will begin at 2:15 p.m. on NASA Television, the agency s website, the NASA app, and YouTube.
Due to the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the focus will be on virtual opportunities for the media and public, with in-person opportunities onsite at NASA s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California limited to members of the media who already have been credentialed.
February 19, 2021 at 8:23 am
NASA’s Perseverance rover has safely landed on the surface of Mars. The rover touched down in Jezero Crater on the Red Planet at 20:55 UTC on 18 February 2021.
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The successful landing was the culmination of a 203-day journey from Earth that saw it travel a total of 472 million km. The Perseverance Mars rover team look on in Mission Control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as the mission’s first images of the Red Planet arrive. Credits: NASA/Bill Ingalls
In a familiar sight for anyone who closely follows NASA’s robotic space probe missions, planetary scientists and engineers erupted into applause once the successful landing had been confirmed.
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An illustration depicts the Perseverance rover operating on Mars (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Space exploration is expected to ramp up further in 2021, and Mars promises to be a hot destination. Spacecrafts from three programs â Mars 2020 (US), Tianwen-1 (China), and Hope Probe (the United Arab Emirates or UAE) â are expected to enter the planetâs orbit in February, hoping to start new chapters of exploration there. Hereâs what is known so far about each mission.
Mars 2020
Seven minutes of harrowing descent to the Red Planet is in the not-so-distant future for NASAâs Mars 2020 mission. Launched on July 30, 2020, the missionâs Perseverance rover is scheduled to land on the surface of Mars on February 18, 2021.
NASA s Perseverance Rover 22 Days From Mars Landing
Perseverance’s Stages of Descent (Illustration): This illustration depicts the some of the major milestones NASA’s Perseverance rover will go through during its seven-minute descent to the Martian surface on Feb. 18, 2021. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Full image and caption ›
Seven minutes of harrowing descent to the Red Planet is in the not-so-distant future for the agency’s Mars 2020 mission.
NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission is just 22 days from landing on the surface of Mars. The spacecraft has about 25.6 million miles (41.2 million kilometers) remaining in its 292.5-million-mile (470.8-million-kilometer) journey and is currently closing that distance at 1.6 miles per second (2.5 kilometers per second). Once at the top of the Red Planet’s atmosphere, an action-packed seven minutes of descent awaits – complete with temperatures equivalent to the surface of the Sun, a supersonic parachute inflation, and t