NASA will land its first rover on Mars on February 18 when the Perseverance descends to the Jezero crater on February 18. A special live stream for students begins at 9:30 p.m. PT; the landing broadcast begins at 11:15 PT.
Space fans can watch the historic event from the comfort of their homes via NASA’s official YouTube page. (NASA also offers a Spanish-language stream here.) Although the Perseverance Rover is equipped with cameras and microphones, NASA is unable to provide a live feed from the landing of the Rover due to delays in the descent of the data. That said, NASA continues to offer live feeds from its mission control room from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and the perseverance will be able to transmit a low resolution of Mars’ surface shortly after landing. The high-tech cameras and microphones send data that shows what it sounds and looks like to land on another planet.
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NASA chose to land its Perseverance Rover in Jezero crater because the area was home to an actively-forming river delta and more filled with water billions of years ago. Collection of samples from the region – for which the perseverance is equipped – could allow NASA to answer key questions about foreign life.
“The sophisticated scientific tools of perseverance will not only help advance the fossilized microbial life, but also expand our knowledge of Mars geology and the past, present and future,” said Caltech’s Ken Farley, project scientist for Mars 2020, said in a statement on 27 January. ‘Our science team is planning the best way to work with what we expect will be a coughing up of leading data. This is the kind of ‘problem’ we are looking forward to. ”
The Perseverance Rover is equipped with a small helicopter called Ingenuity that NASA hopes to fly on the planet to collect data. Ingenuity will indicate NASA’s first experimental flight test on another planet.
“NASA has been exploring Mars since Mariner 4 operated an airfield in July 1965, with two more aircraft, seven successful orbits and eight landers since then,” Thomas Zurbuchen, co-administrator of NASA’s scientific mission board, said in January. a statement said. 27. “Perseverance, built from the collective knowledge gained by such pioneers, has the opportunity not only to expand our knowledge of the Red Planet, but also to address one of the most important and exciting questions of the to examine humanity on the origin of life. on earth and also on other planets. ”
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