NASA-Rover Perseverance has successfully landed on Mars

The Perseverance Rover of the American space agency NASA successfully landed on the surface of Mars on February 18, 2021.

“Confirmed Landing”: The NASA-Rover Perseverance successfully landed on the surface of Mars on February 18, 2021 at around 10:00 p.m. Central European Time. Shortly after landing, it sent its first images back to Earth. This is the beginning of Perseverance’s mission: Perseverance is to explore Mars for at least a year. Note that this is a Martian year that is approximately 687 Earth days long.

In July 2020, the US space agency sent the Perseverance space probe into space; now the Rover Perseverance is there, in the red planet’s Jezero Crater. Between this once-water-filled meteorite impact crater and NASA’s space probe, Perseverance was a stressful challenge after the long journey: landing on the surface of Mars.

Eleven minutes to Mars and back

NASA-Rover Perseverance landings on Mars are always related to tension and, above all, stress. Strictly speaking, no one can be present in the life of the landing, not even the American space agency NASA. The reason for this is the great distance from Mars to Earth. Signals to Mars from Earth travel at the speed of light, but it still takes more than eleven minutes to reach the Red Planet. The other way around, it’s the same. To send a signal to Perseverance and then get the response from the probe, the waiting time is approximately 22 minutes. That’s why POT I did not know until 9:56 pm that the landing was successful. By this time, however, Perseverance had already landed safely on Mars.

Seven minutes of the horror of the Rover Perseverance landing

A landing on Mars takes about seven minutes. However, this also meant that the Perseverance space probe had to execute the landing fully automatically: the entry into the Martian atmosphere, the landing approach and the actual landing. The signal of success or failure of a landing on Mars only reaches Earth when everything has worked, or when it is already too late. So the space agency also calls this process “seven minutes of horror.”

NASA-Rover Perseverance: Search for life that once existed, rock samples, helicopters

After the successful landing of NASA-Rover Perseverance, Perseverance’s actual mission is just beginning. The Mars Rover is supposed to search for clues about life in Jezero Crater. Perseverance also intends to collect rock samples collected by more space probes in a few years as part of a Mars sample return program. Also on board is a small helicopter called “Ingenuity,” which is performing flight tests in Mars’ fragile atmosphere for the first time as a technology demonstration.

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