Watch Live as Perseverance, NASA's Newest Rover, Lands on Mars

It took six and a half months for Perseverance to travel from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to the atmosphere of the red planet. It will now take about seven minutes to get from the atmosphere to the sandy ground. The highly-anticipated 293-million-mile journey of Perseverance is moments away from its conclusion. NASA's newest rover is set to touch down in Jerezo Crater at 12:55 p.m. Pacific. If all goes according to plan, Perseverance will begin its search for signs of ancient Martian life after conducting a series of system checks and making other preparations for its mission. You can watch the live feed right here -- or below.

K'Breel

[sconeu]

I certainly hope that K'Breel and the Council of Elders are keeping close tabs on this. I'd hate to see anyone get their gelsacs punctured due to multiple invaders from the blue planet landing successfully.

Re:

[Valdete22f]

Hey.. Are you sex giant? i wait you here!! Write me!! >> gg.gg/nv5jy

Not really live.

[Gravis Zero]

Transmission delay is between 4 and 24 minutes (depending on how far apart Earth and Mars in their orbits) because... well, speed of light and all.

Re:Not really live.

[chispito]

Transmission delay is between 4 and 24 minutes (depending on how far apart Earth and Mars in their orbits) because... well, speed of light and all.

All live events are subject to the speed of light.

It's live.

Re:

[Tablizer]

But I have Quantum Entanglement TV.

Re:Not really live.

[JoshuaZ]

Which would not actually change things. It is a common misconception that you can use entanglement to send information faster than the speed of light, but we can prove that there's no way to do so with entanglement unless we're very wrong about basic quantum mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem [wikipedia.org].

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[Tablizer]

It can send info faster than light, but you are not "allowed" to do anything impactful with that info.

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[PPH]

TOS violation? They'll suspend my account or what?

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[Alypius]

Meh. Just build your own set of quantum physics.

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[JonnyCalcutta]

With blackjack. And hookers. In fact, forget the physics.

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[JoshuaZ]

Quantum mechanics is weird. If you want, imagine the following: There are two coins which are magically linked. Whenever you flip one coin and it lands on heads or tails, you know that no matter what when you flip the other coin, it will land the same way, but you have no control over the which way they end up. You can use this to get things like a whole bunch of shared random bits, but there's no way to control the flips in a way which you could transmit information.

Re:

[JoshuaZ]

This is an analogy, and at the end of the day, it isn't a real substitute for actually learning the underlying math. The math itself is not actually that hard. For a good introduction to this and a lot of related ideas, Scott Aaronson's "Quantum Computing Since Democritus" covers this and a lot of other neat stuff. But in the analogy, you have no way of telling if the other coin has been flipped or not. All you see is how your coin gets flipped.

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[nagora]

It can send info faster than light, but you are not "allowed" to do anything impactful with that info.

That's why Everybody Loves Raymond can be transmitted faster than light.

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[Ostracus]

At least our communications are secure from the Martians.

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[burtosis]

Mars is 202,404,000km from earth or thereabouts at the time of landing which would make it about 11min 15 sec away if there was no delay in broadcasting.

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[mistergrumpy]

It's currently about 11.4 minutes.

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[Camel Pilot]

Yeah but all this is being filmed in the special CGI NASA production site in Hollywood.... or so my fundi flat earth friends would tell me.

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[A10Mechanic]

Capricorn One! Hey wait, that has O.J. Simpson in it.

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[RoccamOccam]

Carnac (Johnny Carson) [holding envelope to head]: "Capricorn One. Jaws 2."

[After opening the envelope] "What was the final score of the Capricorn-Jaws game?"

Still sticks with me after all of these years.

Re:

[chill]

Why do you think it was dead on arrival?

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[sconeu]

Hey, Don't diss OJ. he just did what the USC football coaches taught him... Cut left, slash right, and then run like hell.

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[ArchieBunker]

Wait until you read about the lag between your optic nerves and your brain.

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[PPH]

Much longer than the lag between my optic nerve and fingers which type responses to Slashdot articles.

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[JonnyCalcutta]

Space phones

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[Cajun Hell]

There's all kinds of cool shit we could be doing, if only it were necessary to efficiently tell the story.

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[Dr_Terminus]

Which is as 'live' we can get at this distance without breaking simultaneity.

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[quonset]

Which is as 'live' we can get at this distance without breaking simultaneity.

Au contraire. We can do live. It's called now [youtube.com]

Re: Not really live.

[BAReFO0t]

Hint: Live is never implying any timing. Ten minute delay for the censor Gestapo is usual for US TV, for example.

It just means "unedited". Like a live concert DVD.
Of course with censors in-between, that is actually bullshit too.

Re:

[JoshuaZ]

That's wrong at many different levels. First of all, the power source in question is small. Second, it is highly protected. Estimates are that even if did somehow blow up, the powersource would survive. Third, the size of the power source is tiny. It is about 5 kg of plutonium dioxide https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/spacecraft/rover/power/ [nasa.gov]. . There's not remotely enough plutonium to do what you are imagining.

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[spitzak]

WHOOSH!

Re: Nuclear Powered MARS car!

[BAReFO0t]

Nice strawman theater play, you guys!

Except in reality, the problem with nuclear fuel is that it is 1. also a very limited resource, and hence stupid for the same reasons as gasoline, and 2. is almost always utterly pointless too, as we already got a huge fusion reactor in the sky, and any tech you use to gain power from nuclear can also be used on the sun. Namely solar power towers. If anything, fission + later fusion on earth would be a *battery*, if we ever get energy-positive fusion to work here.

Re:

[JoshuaZ]

You appear to be making a distinct type of argument here. In particular, you appear to be arguing that we shouldn't try to transition to a 100% nuclear grid. In that context, I'm essentially in agreement. There wouldn't be enough fuel in the very long run, and solar and wind are cheaper and faster to build. If we want to deal with climate change, we have to focus on wind and solar now.

But none of that is terribly relevant to either what the AC was saying or to what I said in my reply. The matter under di

Re:

[RevDisk]

How do you consider fissionable material to be "very limited"? We have 7,641,600 tonnes of uranium in known land reserves, 6,390,475 tonnes of thorium in known land reserves. This does not include the ocean, which has an estimated 3.6 billion tonnes of uranium. Which gets more each year due to natural soil erosion. It's equally renewable as the sun. ie, not really but on human time scales it might as well be.

With current tech, we have thousands of years of energy in fissionables available. If tech advanc

Re:

[Jerrry]

"That's wrong at many different levels. First of all, the power source in question is small. Second, it is highly protected. Estimates are that even if did somehow blow up, the powersource would survive. Third, the size of the power source is tiny. It is about 5 kg of plutonium dioxide https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/spac... [nasa.gov] [nasa.gov]. . There's not remotely enough plutonium to do what you are imagining."

Well, then buy more from the Libyans like Doc Brown does (at least until Mr. Fusion becomes available.)

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[Mattcelt]

These should be banned. Imagine if the rocket blew up in the atmosphere. It could wipe out almost all life on earth.

I sincerely hope you're trolling here.

With proper engineering (which we have), this is not even a possibility.

If you aren't trolling, I don't judge your ignorance. But I certainly judge your ridiculous and absolute declaration based on that ignorance.

Re:Nuclear Powered MARS car!

[Waffle Iron]

Yes Virginia there is a Nuclear Energy Source that is reliable. We use it in our deep space probes and rovers.

Reliable *and* abundant.

After a long hiatus, US is ramping up production of Pu-238 for RTGs, and this rover used a mere three year's worth of our projected national production capacity.

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[burtosis]

Well, you didn’t have to dash my dreams of a nuclear powered car so viciously...

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[quonset]

Yes Virginia there is a Nuclear Energy Source that is reliable. We use it in our deep space probes and rovers.

Reliable *and* abundant.

After a long hiatus, US is ramping up production of Pu-238 for RTGs, and this rover used a mere three year's worth of our projected national production capacity.

Can they convert any of that into Illudium PU-36 for an explosive space modulator?

Is there video actually related to the landing?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Cuz when I click on the link, I get some dumb talking head and a bunch of kids wearing NASA t-shirts.

Sure, it's great to get kids excited about space... but I don't want to watch some stupid streaming video about it.

Re:Is there video actually related to the landing?

[Arthur, KBE]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

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[93 Escort Wagon]

THANK you.

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[mistergrumpy]

Or NASA TV [nasa.gov]

"Not a slashdot story!"

[timeOday]

How often can we unanimously agree that this is, indeed, a slashdot story!

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[AmiMoJo]

20:55 UTC for everyone not in the US. Good luck.

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[AmiMoJo]

Bang on time too, nice.

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[Finallyjoined!!!]

I'm not in the US, but I'm on UTC.

16 miles south of Lincoln in the UK

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[Ostracus]

Netcraft has to confirm it.

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[seoras]

Indeed and I'm grateful to Slashdot for pointing me at the live stream. I'd have missed it otherwise.
Congratulations NASA on landing you're rover!

Re: "Not a slashdot story!"

[BAReFO0t]

Also, note how *everyone* is for this. Nobody is taking any sides.

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[thegarbz]

It's not a Slashdot story until it's been dupe... oh nope it's a Slashdot story alright.

Wrong bus

[notathome]

I though this was the Jupiter planetary bus! I need to get off!

Touchdown!

[Tablizer]

Congrats Tom Bra...um...Perseverance!

First Pic!

[Tablizer]

https://ibb.co/JQ9Fs2w [ibb.co]

Wrong mission.

[Ostracus]

Mission Control the Eagle has landed.

After a succesful landing...

[Anonymous Coward]

All the double masked people, asphyxiated themselves while rejoicing.

Re: After a succesful landing...

[BAReFO0t]

Which makes us rejoice. :)

wtf

[DontBeAMoran]

Why is the video twice as wide as the website itself? Not only is Slashdot unable to add UTF-8 support, they can't even use a freakin' video tag correctly?

Re:

[couchslug]

The same reason a Slashdot editor posts consecutive dupes (among other highly questionable low quality content over a many years) and pointing that out got me downmodded.

Why!!!?!

[Dracos]

Why is there an enormous YouTube video player embedded in this story?

Who went along for the ride?

[AmiMoJo]

Anyone else get their name on the lander? My wife's name is up there.

Re: Who went along for the ride?

[BAReFO0t]

But meanwhile, who's up your wife? :D

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[pbasch]

My signature is on it, on a little plaque with the rest of the ATLO (Assembly, Test, and Launch Operations) team. I was one of two documentation guys who edited the procedures and managed the library. Very exciting.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

Oh wow. That's really impressive.

Landing Successful

[Dewiltse]

The landing was a success!! I am so happy. I wonder how long the drone deployed by the rover will last till something happens to it...

Re:

[Ostracus]

Till Pepsi makes their next commercial.

https://youtu.be/mvCxeGzEru8 [youtu.be]

Martians Escape Again

[Areyoukiddingme]

Successful landing, first photos returns.

You escape this time, Martians! No new craters on Mars. But the bombardment will continue, we can promise you that! *shakes fist*

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[quonset]

Successful landing, first photos returns.

You escape this time, Martians! No new craters on Mars. But the bombardment will continue, we can promise you that! *shakes fist*

False. There are two new craters courtesy of the two tungsten weights [nytimes.com] used to control the spin of the craft.

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[Areyoukiddingme]

False. There are two new craters courtesy of the two tungsten weights used to control the spin of the craft.

Those are just divots. I'm sure Perseverance will put the grass tufts back on the fairway after it plays through.

Meh

[nospam007]

Stanley Kubrick would have sent a camera crew to show a wide angle shot from the hill.

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[SpinyNorman]

They could have sent curiosity to get the ground shot ... but it's 2000+ miles away, so ... maybe not.

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[AlexHilbertRyan]

Selfies are for idiots, real scientists like those doing the mars thing arent like those idiots on earth.

live ?

[AlexHilbertRyan]

thats a bloody con, theres a 8min delay because light isnt fast enuff or have htey invented some quantum transmitter. ?