perseverance rover landing on mars - today 2/18

[dawp]

Mars 2020: Perseverance Rover - NASA Science

NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover seeks signs of ancient life and collects samples of rock and regolith for possible Earth return.

mars.nasa.gov

just a heads up for tomorrow, several option on that link

 

[BoomerD]

Gonna do my best to watch the coverage. I'm really hoping they pull it off as well as they did with Opportunity Curiosity. (sorry...wrong rover)

 

[dawp]

just a reminder that this is happening today, coverage has already started on NASA TV

 

[sdifox]

lol the guy on upper left of the feed should get better lighting

 

[hal2kilo]

Got my reminder set on my cable box for the Discovery Ch. coverage.
Edit: Just lots of this is what's going to happen on the NASA live channel at the moment.

 

[dawp]

Mars 2020 Entry Descent Landing (nasa.gov)

another view tho i couldn't get it to work in firefox, it does in edge

 

[hal2kilo]

Mars 2020 Entry Descent Landing (nasa.gov)

another view tho i couldn't get it to work in firefox, it does in edge

Thanks, at least getting realtime data w/simulation.
Edit: Not realtime. I'm on the site and there were just getting rid of mass when they announced the landing on MSNBC. Oh well.

 

[dawp]

touchdown, now comes the the wait for confirmation it survived

 

[feralkid]

Survived!

 

[dawp]

first image

 

[VRAMdemon]

woohooo!... we got pictures!. What a feat! Congrats to everyone involved.

 

[BoomerD]

Woot!

 

[Fenixgoon]

NASA/JPL are pretty fucking good at this whole rover thing 😎

 

[VRAMdemon]

As I understand ... This one has a 20mp camera which is a big upgrade from Curiosity’s 4mp one. We should get some awsome images. But there should also be high quality video of the landing (complete with audio) which is going to be incredible to watch.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Thanks Joe...

 

[Saylick]

Congratulations to NASA, the engineers, and everyone who supported those who have contributed to the project!

It's been fascinating to see the Sky Crane landing concept be validated once more. I remember when Spirit landed on Mars in the 2004 and it literally involved dropping the rover from a few meters off the ground, with it encapsulated in a lattice of balloons mind you. The good folks at NASA were like, "Yeah, we can't do this with a much larger, heavier rover. We need to come up with something more graceful".

 

[dawp]

next comes the the test flight

 

[VRAMdemon]

This has been a heck of a month for Mars exploration: Hope and Tianwen1 both made it to orbit, now Perseverance has successfully landed. We’ve still got the lander part of Tianwen1 to happen (several months before they try that, though) and Perseverance has a drone/helicopter!

Good Times for once

 

[VRAMdemon]

According to Scientific American:

The First 100 Days on Mars: How NASA's Perseverance Rover Will Begin Its Mission

With the space agency’s latest rover set to touch down on February 18, here is the agenda for its initial months

www.scientificamerican.com

The very first thing Perseverance will do after landing is to fire some pyrotechnic devices, releasing the covers on cameras on board the rover. It will then take images in front and behind the rover and send those back to Earth via NASA’s orbiting Mars Odyssey spacecraft and Europe’s Trace Gas Orbiter. After that? A quick nap of course, “to recharge the batteries until the next day on Mars,”

 

[Fenixgoon]

Thanks Joe...

Guess we should start a thread for this, eh? 🤣

 

[hal2kilo]

NASA/JPL are pretty fucking good at this whole rover thing 😎

As a person who took care of electronics gear for a living, there are a millions things that could go wrong. But, although they may be a PITA, if you have good QA (the kind that actually know their shit) and your engineering designs are simple and robust as you can make, amazing things happen. None of the launches I acquired data for ever went into orbit though.

 

[trenchfoot]

I'm expecting the Chinese rover to build a 1 meter sq. artificial island on Mars IATD (Immediately After Touch Down) and claim the planet for itself.

 

[UNCjigga]

According to Scientific American:

The First 100 Days on Mars: How NASA's Perseverance Rover Will Begin Its Mission

With the space agency’s latest rover set to touch down on February 18, here is the agenda for its initial months

www.scientificamerican.com

Wait... so the first thing they’ll do is detonate something off the cameras and hope the camera lenses survive? Oy.... have to keep reminding myself that an engineer way smarter than me already figured out this was the “easy”/cheaper way to protect cameras during landing.

 

[MrSquished]

I hope they find Matt Damon, I like that guy.

 

[hal2kilo]

Wait... so the first thing they’ll do is detonate something off the cameras and hope the camera lenses survive? Oy.... have to keep reminding myself that an engineer way smarter than me already figured out this was the “easy”/cheaper way to protect cameras during landing.

Probably nothing bigger than a "lady finger" to pop off a lens cover. I doubt very much that the pyrotechnic is between the lens and the cover anyway. Actually, much simpler and more reliable than a spring that might jam or something.