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The high-definition video clip, which is three minutes and 25 seconds long, shows the deployment of a red and white parachute with a canopy that is 21.5 meters wide (70.5 feet).
NASA’s Perseverance rover Mars has sent images of the planet after it made its landing. Image: @ NASAPersevere / Twitter
WASHINGTON – The US space agency Nasa released the first audio from Mars on Monday, a faint, crackling recording of a gust of wind captured by the Perseverance rover.
NASA also released the first video of last week’s landing of the rover, which is tasked with looking for signs of past life on the Red Planet.
A microphone did not work during the rover’s descent to the surface, but it was able to capture audio once it landed on Mars.
NASA engineers played a 60-second recording.
“What you hear there in 10 seconds is a real gust of wind on the surface of Mars caught by the microphone and sent back to Earth,” said Dave Gruel, lead engineer for the camera and microphone system at Perseverance.
Now that you’ve seen Mars, listen to it. Grab some headphones and listen to the first sounds captured by one of my microphones. https://t.co/JswvAWC2IP#CountdownToMars
NASA’s Mars Rover Perseverance (@NASAPersevere) February 22, 2021
Your front row seat for my landing on Mars is here. Look how we did it.#CountdownToMars pic.twitter.com/Avv13dSVmQ
NASA’s Mars Rover Perseverance (@NASAPersevere) February 22, 2021
The high-definition video clip, which is three minutes and 25 seconds long, shows the deployment of a red and white parachute with a canopy that is 21.5 meters wide (70.5 feet).
It shows the heat shield falling after protecting Perseverance as it entered the Martian atmosphere and the rover landed in a cloud of dust in Jezero crater, north of the red planet’s equator.
“This is the first time we’ve been able to capture an event like the landing on Mars,” said Michael Watkins, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managing the mission.
“These are really amazing videos,” Watkins said. “We saw them all weekend.”
Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science, said the video of Perseverance’s descent is “the closest you can get to landing on Mars without donning a pressure suit.”
‘PERSEVERANCE IS HEALTHY’
Jessica Samuels, Perseverance’s surface mission manager, said the rover was performing as expected so far and engineers were conducting an intensive overhaul of its systems and instruments.
“I am pleased to report that Perseverance is healthy and continues with activities as we have been planning,” said Samuels.
He said the team was preparing for a flight of the rover’s small unmanned helicopter named Ingenuity.
“The team is still evaluating,” he said. “We haven’t blocked a site yet.”
The device will attempt the first powered flight on another planet and will have to achieve lift in an atmosphere that is only one percent the density of Earth.
Perseverance launched on July 30, 2020, and landed on the surface of Mars on Thursday.
Its main mission will last little more than two years, but it is likely to continue to function well beyond. Its predecessor, Curiosity, is still operating eight years after landing on Mars.
In the coming years, Perseverance will attempt to collect 30 rock and soil samples in sealed tubes to send them back to Earth sometime in the 2030s for laboratory analysis.
About the size of an SUV, the craft weighs a ton, is equipped with a two-meter-long robotic arm, has 19 cameras, two microphones, and a state-of-the-art instrument cluster.
Mars was warmer and more humid in its distant past, and although previous exploration has determined that the planet was habitable, Perseverance is tasked with determining whether it was actually inhabited.
It will begin drilling its first samples in summer, and along the way, it will deploy new instruments to scan organic matter, map chemical composition, and zap rocks with a laser to study steam.
One experiment involves an instrument that can convert oxygen in the atmosphere primarily to carbon dioxide from Mars, much like a plant.
The idea is that humans will eventually not need to carry their own oxygen on hypothetical future trips, which is crucial for rocket fuel and for breathing.
The rover is only the fifth to put its wheels on Mars. The feat was first accomplished in 1997 and they have all been Americans.
The United States is preparing for an eventual human mission to the planet, although the planning remains very preliminary.
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