NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover

[colin79666]

console.write(“Hello World”);

[MartG]

[Killer2005]

Great stuff.

[MiniMan64]

London424 said:

That reaction when they found out where it landed seemed like they may have been off a bit.

Didn’t they say that it had the ability to pick its own landing site and adjust accordingly?

[lazy_b]

Brilliant stuff!

Did anyone else notice the commentator (probably not her real job title) saying that the lander was about to "straighten up and fly right"?

[CraigyMc]

MiniMan64 said:

London424 said:

That reaction when they found out where it landed seemed like they may have been off a bit.

Didn’t they say that it had the ability to pick its own landing site and adjust accordingly?

Yep. It has (well, had) the ability to select a landing zone itself. NASA call it terrain relative navigation (TRN).
Basically it'll avoid rough ground, cliffs, stuff like that.

[Greshamst]

Can’t wait to see the video footage soon

[Beati Dogu]

Mars is visible right now, just above the moon. I gave it a wave.

[London424]

CraigyMc said:

MiniMan64 said:

London424 said:

That reaction when they found out where it landed seemed like they may have been off a bit.

Didn’t they say that it had the ability to pick its own landing site and adjust accordingly?

Yep. It has (well, had) the ability to select a landing zone itself. NASA call it terrain relative navigation (TRN).
Basically it'll avoid rough ground, cliffs, stuff like that.

It was just when they said it’s telling us where it is there was some strange comments and I swear I heard a “we’ll take it” or words to that effect. Maybe it’s not quite where they anticipated

[durbster]

Been sat watching this for the last couple of hours and it was great. They're getting a lot better at the presentation side now too which is probably due to SpaceX showing how it's done.

It's amazing how chilled everyone seemed in the control room throughout. How they can go through that without any swearing is really something

I'm really looking forward to seeing how the helicopter goes.

[Chozza]

London424 said:

It was just when they said it’s telling us where it is there was some strange comments and I swear I heard a “we’ll take it” or words to that effect. Maybe it’s not quite where they anticipated

I thought i heard someone mention it was close to a cliff edge ( 31M ) in the the clean feed - but i cant find it when im playing back

[Clive Milk]

Nice work, rockets going up is fun for stz and giggles but landers landing is where it is at, tension wise.

Since 1976 and Viking NASA have been very impressive on Mars. It would be interesting to know how quickly Viking sent it's first picture from the surface compared to today. I will never forget that first colour image of the red rocks and reddish sky..

Shame Jim Bridenstine is not there at the moment. I think he and Steve Jurczyk would make a great team on the science and public face of NASA.

Such is politics ....

[Eric Mc]

I think the first Viking lander image came back within a couple of hours.

[Russ35]

The first 3 images have uploaded to the Perseverance web site :

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-imag...

Hopefully the first of many thousands.

[London424]

Found it

https://youtu.be/gm0b_ijaYMQ

If you go to 1:43:15 it’s certainly not where they were expecting.

[Clive Milk]

Eric Mc said:

I think the first Viking lander image came back within a couple of hours.

Considering they got both down working, still amazing. Also they had a 90 day life and lasted for years I recall

Martian sky tinted glasses on

[MiseryStreak]

I so want to be there.

No viruses.

No people.

No oxygen.

Heaven.

[Pupp]

Meanwhile, on Horsell Common, the large threaded plug on a still-smoking metallic looking cylinder that is half embedded in the sod starts to unscrew...

[bobthemonkey]

London424 said:

Found it

https://youtu.be/gm0b_ijaYMQ

If you go to 1:43:15 it’s certainly not where they were expecting.

Landed in a generally more rugged/bumpy patch than expected, going by the post landing news conference.

Good news it that the actual landing patch itself is nice and flat and its close to some very interesting areas for science.

Compared to Curiosity, Perseverance had a more advanced terrain mapping camera and decision logic in terms of determining the final landing point.

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/technology/...

Edited by bobthemonkey on Thursday 18th February 23:37

[Eric Mc]

Clive Milk said:

Considering they got both down working, still amazing. Also they had a 90 day life and lasted for years I recall

Martian sky tinted glasses on

They were very cautious with Viking. The Viking craft consisted of two parts, an orbiter and a lander. The combined spacecraft first entered orbit. Then the orbiter spent time surveying the proposed landing site before the lander was released. I think there was around a month between the orbiter getting into orbit and the lander landing.

Perseverance just went straight in. There is no orbiting element to this space probe. Instead, it will make use of the various spacecraft that are currently orbiting the planet.