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It's been a few days since the Perseverance, rover from NASA — rover is a category of space exploration vehicle — arrived on the famous red planet. Considered a historic day for space lovers and science, NASA today released a video of the Perseverance landing on Mars, with three different capture angles. Thanks to the recording system, the team responsible for the small spacecraft obtained the first 30 gigabytes (GB) of data, along with more than 20.000 sequential images of the arrival at our planetary neighbor. 3d436p
After a journey of almost a year, the perseverance landing it was so anticipated that many netizens spent hours updating the NASA website in anticipation of an official video – and it arrived! Thanks to the fragment released by the space agency, any human being with stable internet can watch the event of the year. This was possible thanks to the complex camera system attached to the three parts of the robot: the protective heat shield and parachute, the landing module and Perseverance itself.
How was Perseverance's landing? 4e4q5r
Did you know that only 40% of the missions destined for Mars managed to land successfully?
Who am I to make a comparison between the perseverance landing to the levels of turbulence on Earth? All you need to know is that, on approaching the red planet, the rover abandoned its travel module; at this point, he was up to about 20.000 kilometers per hour (km/h) and needed to lose nearly 100% of that speed in less than 10 minutes—a moment affectionately dubbed by the engineering team as The Seven Minutes of Terror — otherwise the impact with the Martian surface would destroy it. The protective shield, in turn, protected our extraterrestrial ambassador from temperatures of up to 1300°C — luckily, it all worked out!
O mission objective, according to NASA, is to collect samples of rocks and Martian soil, as well as look for signs of ancient life such as microbes and the like, more or less in the same evolutionary line as terrestrial life. Before that, however, the robot's primary mission is to analyze the surroundings of the crater of Jezero in search of fossils, given that, in this region, there was a lake 3.5 billion years ago. The interest, in this case, is to understand how and when the lake dried up, and if this phenomenon influenced the formation of the dry and arid planet we know today. This preliminary task alone will take 2 Earth years to complete.
Bearing this in mind, we can say that NASA's desire is to expand its research in the field called astrobiology. For those interested in the more technological part of the thing, it is important to keep an eye on the mission to return the samples to Earth; according to NASA data, the idea is to launch the collected samples by means of small rockets, so that the data can be analyzed by specialists here in the old world. However, this should only happen in the next decade.
In addition to this information about the main mission, the creation of the space agency intends, in a secondary way, to examine atmospheric conditions to, for example, produce and maintain enough oxygen for a future manned mission to the planet to remain safe.
How was Perseverance prepared to capture audio and images from Mars? 695q3r
According to NASA, the mechanism, in its entirety, had 23 cameras installed, 7 of which were used to capture the images that we see in the landing video of the Perseverance. The others are intended for the rover, in the sense of collecting data and taking pictures of possible discoveries – in addition, of course, to delighting viewers on Earth so far away. However, there are two microphones attached, responsible for capturing the first audios of the red planet. Fortunately, there was no murmur worthy of the aliens from mars attacks, or else interference from the hostile beings of Signs.
One of the most striking factors is that some parts of Perseverance and the Ingenuity — an affable drone that looks like a mini helicopter and comes with the rover — were made with parts available on the market. Main robot cameras, for example, rely on a hardware da Intel, which runs through the operating system Linux. Not surprisingly, programmers are ecstatic with this information. It is important to note that this does not mean that anyone can assemble a space probe – it seems obvious, but sometimes the obvious needs to be said.
Ingenuity, on the other hand, was developed with a processor — amazingly — Snapdragon 801 from Qualcomm, which also runs on Linux system. It's a funny feeling to imagine that the chipset from a cell phone is present in a drone that could be scanning the surface of another planet right now. These peripherals the two microphones – one commercial and the other made by NASA itself – to show the public a little of Perseverance's vision. The microphone is especially interesting because it gives the opportunity for fans of outer space who have a vision problem to enjoy as much as those who can see.
Where to watch the Perseverance landing video? 492z3y
Well, it's not necessary to go far, just watch the video of Perseverance's landing right here, right below. To the most inquisitive, that piece of metal that looks like a Japanese peasant's hat (there throughout the 30 seconds of video) is the protective shield being discarded after protecting Perseverance.
For those who want to see the surroundings of the crater where Perseverance landed, just take a look at the following video, which presents an interactive 360º view and in 4K quality.
And finally, for those who want to hear a wind on Mars, just take a look at the Soundcloud made available by NASA. In this one, there are no sounds made by Perseverance itself, but in the same profile, you can find the file with them, if you want.
Bonus: Image gallery captured by Perseverance 523b7
Also see the article on when the NASA space rover arrived on the red planet.
