At a press conference this afternoon, NASA released a new video showing, in real-time and full color, the entire descent and landing of the Perseverance Mars rover. The video begins with the deployment of the parachute, and ends with the Skycrane cutting the rover free and flying away. It’s the most mind-blowing three minutes of video I have ever seen.
The cameras that recorded video during the Mars 2020 rover’s landing on Mars.Image: NASA/JPL
Some very quick context: during landing, multiple cameras were recording the event, and this video is a combination of these. No audio was recorded, so you’re hearing a feed from JPL mission control.
Here’s the video:
We’ll have a lot more on the Perseverance rover, but for now, we’re just going to let this video sink in.
[ Mars 2020 ]
Evan Ackerman is a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum. Since 2007, he has written over 6,000 articles on robotics and technology. He has a degree in Martian geology and is excellent at playing bagpipes.