LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – NASA scientists presented striking early images on Friday of the Mars Rover Perseverance’s perfect landing, including a selfie of the six-wheeled vehicle hanging just above the surface of the Red Planet, moments before touching.
The color photo, which would probably become an instant classic among memorable images from the history of space travel, was mounted by a camera on the rocket-powered ‘sky crane’ downhill stage, just above the rover, while the car-sized spacecraft was busy Thursday to Mars Ground.
The image was unveiled by mission managers during an online news release webcast from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles, less than 24 hours after landing.
In the photo, looking down on the car, the entire vehicle is suspended from three cables that have not been flushed from the crane, along with a ‘umbilical cord’ communication cord. Dust vertebrae of dust kicked up by the crane’s rocket presses are also visible.
Seconds later, the rover was gently planted on its wheels, its teeth were cut off and the crane – completing its work – flew to dump a safe distance away, though not before photos and other data collected during the descent reached the Rover for safekeeping.
The image of the Hanging Science Laboratory, striking for its clarity and sense of motion, is the first photograph of a spacecraft landing on Mars or any planet outside of Earth.
“This is something we’ve never seen before,” Aaron Stehura, a deputy head of the mission’s descent and landing team, described himself and colleagues as ‘amazed’ when they first viewed the image.
IMMEDIATELY ICONIC
Adam Steltzner, chief engineer for the Perseverance project at JPL, said the image was immediately iconic, similar to the shooting of Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the moon in 1969, or images from the Voyager 1 probe of Saturn in 1980.
He said the viewer relates to an important moment that represents years of work by thousands of individuals.
‘You’re brought to the surface of Mars. “You sit there, seven meters from the rover and look down,” he said. “It’s absolutely thrilling, and it’s a sign of the other images from our experience as people moving out into our solar system.”
The image was taken at the end of the so-called “seven minutes-of-fright” descent series that brought perseverance from the top of Mars’ atmosphere, which traveled 12,000 miles per hour, to a gentle touch on the floor of an expansive basin called the Jezero Crater.
Next week, NASA hopes to present more photos and videos – some possibly with audio – taken by all six cameras mounted on the descending spacecraft, showing more of the crane maneuvers, as well as the deployment of the supersonic parachute that preceded it.
Pauline Hwang, strategic mission manager, said the rover itself “does well and is healthy on the surface of Mars, and that it is still very functional and amazing.”
The vehicle ends up about two kilometers from high cliffs at the foot of an old river delta that was carved into the corner of the crater billions of years ago, when Mars was warmer, wetter and presumably hospitable to life.
Scientists say the site is ideal for pursuing the primary purpose of Perseverance – to search for fossilized traces of microbial life preserved in sediments that were presumably deposited around the delta and the long-gone lake that once fed it.
Samples of rock drilled from the Martian soil must be stored on the surface for eventual recovery and delivery to Earth by two future robot missions to the Red Planet, as early as 2031.
Another color photo published Friday, captured moments after the arrival of the rover, shows a rocky expanse of terrain around the landing site and that looks like the delta cliffs in the distance.
The mission’s surface team will spend the coming days and weeks unfolding, unfolding and testing the vehicle’s robotic arm, communications antennas and other equipment, aligning instruments and upgrading the Rover’s software. , Hwang said.
She said it would take about nine ‘sols’, or Mars days, before the rover was ready for its first test run.
Before the search for signs of a microbial life began, Perseverance’s task was to deploy a miniature helicopter he was transporting to Mars for an unprecedented outdoor test flight. But Hwang said the effort was still about two months away.
Reporting by Steve Gorman; Edited by Daniel Wallis