The March 2020 Perseverance Mission kicks off Cape Canaveral, Florida, on July 30th. NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System tool allows you to track the spacecraft in real time as it makes its way to Mars for February 18, 2021. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
The last time we saw NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission was on July 30, 2020, as it disappeared into the black of deep space on a trajectory for Mars. But with NASA’s eyes on the solar system, you can follow in real time as man’s most sophisticated rover – and the Ingenuity Mars helicopter that travels with it – millions of miles over the next six months to Jezero Crater.
“Eyes on the solar system visualize the same trajectory data that the navigation team uses to track the course of Perseverance to Mars,” said Fernando Abilleira, the Mars 2020 design and navigation manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “If you want to join us on our journey, then this is the place to be.”
Eyes not only show you the distance between the Red Planet and the spaceship at this very moment. You can also fly formation with Mars 2020 or check the relative speed between Mars and Earth, or, say, the dwarf planet Pluto.
“With all of our orbital possessions around Mars, such as curiosity and InSight on their surface, new data and imagery are constantly emerging across the Red Planet,” said Jon Nelson, visualization technology for technology and application development at JPL. “Essentially, if you haven’t seen Mars through Eyes on the solar system lately, you haven’t seen Mars.”
Dozens of pop-up menu controls let you customize not only what you see – from far right “on board” a spaceship – but also how you see it: Choose the 3-D mode, and everything you need is a pair of red-cyan anaglyph glasses for a more immersive experience.
You also do not have to stop at Mars. You can travel through the solar system and even through time. The website not only uses real-time data and images of NASA’s fleet of space, they are also populated with NASA data dating back to 1950 and projected to 2050. Location, motion, and appearance are based on predicted and reconstructed mission data.
While exploring, take a deeper dive into our home planet with Eyes on the Earth and travel to distant worlds with Eyes on ExoPlanets.
Mars-bound spacecraft experiencing technical difficulties: NASA
eyes.nasa.gov/apps/orrery/#/sc_perseverance
Citation: Follow NASA’s Perseverance rover in real time en route to Mars (2020, August 23) Retrieved August 23, 2020 from https://phys.org/news/2020-08-nasa-perseverance-rover-real-mars.html
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