Which direction was the lander travelling from. There does appear to be wider blue areas to land in, at the top, the left and the bottom of the coloured map.
Unless the spot they chose had more certainty of finding what they were looking for. Any indication of fuel restrictions or any other reasons?
Weren't all the blue areas equally suitable?
A tray full of GOLD is not worth a moment in time.
They have a landing ellipse in the range of 5km. They have no influence on where in that ellipse they come down, it is determined by the inprecise parachute phase. They have a small maneuvering capability in the final approach with engines to avoid hazardous areas.
^ Thank you.
They had some technologies this time that weren't available before. It wasn't quite as hit and hope as you might think. Here's a really good animation showing how it all worked.
Touchdown! NASA's Perseverance rover lands on Mars to begin hunt for signs of ancient life | SpaceThere was doubtless a decent dose of relief mixed in with the excitement, for success today was far from guaranteed. Over the decades, only about half of Mars surface missions have touched down safely. And Perseverance's landing site on Jezero's floor, which features hazards such as cliffs, sand dunes and boulder fields, was the toughest ever targeted by a Mars mission, NASA officials have said.
Indeed, this dangerous terrain required Perseverance to make the most precise Red Planet touchdown ever. The rover's landing ellipse was just 4.8 miles long by 4.1 miles wide (7.7 by 6.6 kilometers), compared to 4 miles by 12 miles (7 by 12 km) for Curiosity.
Perseverance hit that target today with the aid of two new entry, descent and landing (EDL) technologies that Curiosity didn't have at its disposal. One, called "range trigger," allowed the mission to deploy its supersonic parachute at just the right moment. The other, "terrain-relative navigation," enabled Perseverance's sky crane to assess the Jezero landscape and navigate autonomously around potential hazards during the descent.
These landing technologies worked exactly as planned, guiding Perseverance to a picture-perfect touchdown on a safe, flat part of Jezero's floor, mission team members said during a post-landing news conference this afternoon.
A high resolution map of the area with the landing ellipse marked. It is pretty much a circle and the landing site is very close to the center. Need to get to that site and you can zoom in and out. From fu-berlin.de. Freie Universität Berlin.
Jezero Crater
"don't attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence"
There is an excellent doco on Nat Geo called Built for Mars: The Perseverance Rover.
Basically they've sent the most complex piece of engineering ever launched into space 200 million kilometres away to look for evidence of pond scum.
The helicopter is going to be a brilliant addition to the expedition.
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Warning: Be cautious if you are a fragile pink
I don't see it listed on torrents. I found it on my IPTV catchup.
The NASA touchdown video.
‘7 minutes of terror’: NASA reveals final nerve-shredding moments of rover’s descent to Mars (VIDEO)
22 Feb, 2021 20:58
‘7 minutes of terror’: NASA reveals final nerve-shredding moments of rover’s descent to Mars (VIDEO) — RT World News
https://twitter.com/hashtag/CountdownToMars?src=hashtag_click
All under control from the calm female speaker.
Warning: Not Space News.
But this is pretty interesting news, and also just pretty interesting, while also related to the possibility of life under the ice on geologically active moons Europa and Enceladus.
Scientists stumble across life that ‘shouldn’t be there,’ 3,000 feet under Antarctica
A team of British scientists were surprised to find life thousands of feet beneath the ice of Antarctica, in a sub-freezing environment where sunlight never reaches.
there are “all sorts of reasons they shouldn’t be there.”
A looming question is how the organisms are feeding, since researchers calculate that the closest source of photosynthesis is more than 900 miles away.
Includes a good short video, presented by possibly the gayest man alive, of the discovery and the complexity of the life down there.
Scientists stumble across life that ‘shouldn’t be there,’ 3,000 feet under Antarctica | WGN-TV
Video doing the rounds this morning of the landing taken from the pod, the skycrane and the rover. awesome. Also audio of the Martian wind.
on the phone so can't repost it.
try here.
Nasa releases video of Perseverance rover landing on Mars | Mars | The Guardian
Ah ha
Last edited by Cujo; 23-02-2021 at 12:43 PM.
“If we stop testing right now we’d have very few cases, if any.” Donald J Trump.
I watched the NASA press conference yesterday where they released that footage.
Almost two hours, very long but interesting. A few facts. The cameras that took these videos are off the shelf equipment, only slightly modified for Mars conditions. Lots of the software is open source.
I was quite surprised they got that much data in a short time. With Curiosity it took a long time for a lot less. All the Mars orbiters of the US and ESA were involved in transmitting. Especially the ESA Trace Gas orbiter.
The landing video on YouTube
Life requires energy. Light from the sun supplies energy. But bacteria can also metabolize chemical compounds. Bacteria have been found in rock km below the surface. Supply is very limited there so there are few. Black smokers provide plenty of energy so a lot of life there.
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