The US space agency (NASA) this evening (Monday) released the thrilling landing moments of the Perseverance (“Perseverance”) spacecraft, which was launched last summer, and arrived on Mars last Thursday. The video shows the landing moments as documented by the spacecraft’s cameras, alongside the minutes The tensions in the agency’s control room, where the stressed scientists sat.
The video comes after the agency released several photos taken by the lander on Saturday afternoon, including a “selfie” of the six-wheeled vehicle while in the air above the surface of the red planet, just before it touched the ground. The lander image is such a close-up photograph of a spacecraft landing on Mars, or any planet beyond Earth. This is thanks to a camera that provided a shooting angle that was not possible in previous missions. “This moment is a moment we have been dreaming about for years, and now it has become a reality,” Preservers’ Twitter account read, “Dare to realize great things.”
The image was taken at the end of the so-called “Seven Minutes of Horror” landing sequence, which brought the lander from the heights of Mars at 12,000 miles per hour, to a soft landing on a huge crater floor called the Gizro Crater, about two miles high cliffs at the base of the ancient river Billions of years ago, when Mars was warmer, more humid and had conditions that were more likely to allow life.