'Something we've never seen' - Mars rover beams back selfie
The image was taken at the very end of the so-called "seven-minutes-of-terror" descent sequence.
By Reuters, February 20, 2021
NASA's Perseverance rover descends to touch down on
Mars in a still image from a video camera aboard the descent stage
taken February 18, 2021. (photo credit: NASA/JPL-CALTECH/REUTERS)
NASA scientists on Friday presented striking early images from the picture-perfect landing of the Mars
rover Perseverance, including a selfie of the six-wheeled vehicle
dangling just above the surface of the Red Planet moments before
touchdown.
The color
photograph, likely to become an instant classic among memorable images
from the history of spaceflight, was snapped by a camera mounted on the
rocket-powered "sky crane" descent-stage just above the rover as the
car-sized space vehicle was being lowered on Thursday to Martian soil.
The
image was unveiled by mission managers during an online news briefing
webcast from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles
less than 24 hours after the landing.
The
picture, looking down on the rover, shows the entire vehicle suspended
from three cables unspooled from the sky crane, along with an
"umbilical" communications cord. Swirls of dust kicked up by the crane's
rocket thrusters are also visible.
Seconds
later, the rover was gently planted on its wheels, its tethers were
severed, and the sky crane - its job completed - flew off to crash a
safe distance away, though not before photos and other data collected
during the descent were transmitted to the rover for safekeeping.
The
image of the dangling science lab, striking for its clarity and sense
of motion, marks the first such close-up photo of a spacecraft landing
on Mars, or any planet beyond Earth.
"This
is something we've never seen before," Aaron Stehura, a deputy lead for
the mission's descent and landing team, describing himself and
colleagues as "awe-struck" when first viewing the image.
The
first high-resolution, color image to be sent back by the Hazard
Cameras (Hazcams) on the underside of NASA's Perseverance Mars rover
(NASA/JPL/REUTERS).
INSTANTLY ICONIC
Adam
Steltzner, chief engineer for the Perseverance project at JPL, said he
found the image instantly iconic, comparable to the shot of Apollo 11
astronaut Buzz Aldrin standing on the moon in 1969, or the Voyager 1
probe's images of Saturn in 1980.
He said the viewer is connected with a landmark moment representing years of work by thousands of individuals.
"You
are brought to the surface of Mars. You're sitting there, seven meters
off the surface of the rover looking down," he said. "It's absolutely
exhilarating, and it is evocative of those other images from our
experience as human beings moving out into our solar system."
The
image was taken at the very end of the so-called
"seven-minutes-of-terror" descent sequence that brought Perseverance
from the top of Mars' atmosphere, traveling at 12,000 miles per hour, to
a gentle touchdown on the floor of a vast basin called the Jezero
Crater.
Next week,
NASA hopes to present more photos and video - some possibly with audio -
taken by all six cameras affixed to the descending spacecraft, showing
more of the sky crane maneuvers, as well as the supersonic parachute
deployment that preceded it.
Pauline
Hwang, strategic mission manager, said the rover itself "is doing great
and is healthy on the surface of Mars, and continues to be highly
functional and awesome."
The
vehicle landed about two kilometers from tall cliffs at the base of a
ancient river delta carved into the corner of the crater billions of
years ago, when Mars was warmer, wetter and presumably hospitable to
life.
Scientists
say the site is ideal for pursuing Perseverance's primary objective -
searching for fossilized traces of microbial life preserved in sediments
believed to have been deposited around the delta and the long-vanished
lake it once fed.
Samples
of rock drilled from the Martian soil are to be stored on the surface
for eventual retrieval and delivery to Earth by two future robotic
missions to the Red Planet, as early as 2031.
Another
color photo published on Friday, captured moments after the rover's
arrival, shows a rocky expanse of terrain around the landing site and
what appear to be the delta cliffs in the distance.
The
mission's surface team will spend the coming days and weeks
unfastening, unfurling and testing the vehicle's robot arm,
communication antennae and other equipment, aligning instruments and
upgrading the rover's software, Hwang said.
She said it would be about nine "sols," or Martian days, before the rover is ready for its first test spin.
One
of Perseverance's tasks before embarking on its search for signs of
microbial life will be to deploy a miniature helicopter it carried to
Mars for an unprecedented extraterrestrial test flight. But Hwang said
that effort was still about two months away.
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