the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, NASA has released a video showing several viewpoints of last week’s Mars landing. The video shows the descent starting from the release of the parachute. About 30GB of data was captured during the descent. The footage will be used to sharpen knowledge about future entry, descent, and landing technology. One problem identified by the footage is the large amount of dust that was kicked up by the descent stage, which will be an important issue for larger spacecraft. The video of the landing is available in the article.
NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance mission captured thrilling footage of its rover landing in Mars’ Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021. The real footage in this video was captured by several cameras that are part of the rover’s entry, descent, and landing suite. The views include a camera looking down from the spacecraft’s descent stage (a kind of rocket-powered jet pack that helps fly the rover to its landing site), a camera on the rover looking up at the descent stage, a camera on the top of the aeroshell (a capsule protecting the rover) looking up at that parachute, and a camera on the bottom of the rover looking down at the Martian surface. The audio embedded in the video comes from the mission control call-outs during entry, descent, and landing. For more information about Perseverance, visit https://mars.nasa.gov/perseverance