NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover Provides Front-Row Seat to Landing, First Audio Recording of Red Planet

New video from NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover chronicles major milestones during the final minutes of its entry, descent, and landing (EDL) on the Red Planet on Feb. 18 as the spacecraft plummeted, parachuted, and rocketed toward the surface of Mars. A microphone on the rover also has provided the first audio recording of sounds from Mars. From a report: From the moment of parachute inflation, the camera system covers the entirety of the descent process, showing some of the rover's intense ride to Mars' Jezero Crater. The footage from high-definition cameras aboard the spacecraft starts 7 miles (11 kilometers) above the surface, showing the supersonic deployment of the most massive parachute ever sent to another world, and ends with the rover's touchdown in the crater. A microphone attached to the rover did not collect usable data during the descent, but the commercial off-the-shelf device survived the highly dynamic descent to the surface and obtained sounds from Jezero Crater on Feb. 20. About 10 seconds into the 60-second recording, a Martian breeze is audible for a few seconds, as are mechanical sounds of the rover operating on the surface. "For those who wonder how you land on Mars -- or why it is so difficult -- or how cool it would be to do so -- you need look no further," said acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk. "Perseverance is just getting started, and already has provided some of the most iconic visuals in space exploration history. It reinforces the remarkable level of engineering and precision that is required to build and fly a vehicle to the Red Planet."

The real question is...

[wakeboarder]

Do we get video of the landing eventually? I really want to see video.

Re:The real question is...

[TheBlueCrab]

From the NASA Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

Re:

[Tablizer]

That's pretty cool. You can see it gradually fall toward the surface until it's at the point where it's kicking up dust via retro-rockets. When the dust clears, you see the sky-crane fly away. It cuts to the control room with everyone cheering. (The control room couldn't see the video itself at the time, but they had telemetry.) The only thing really missing is a pan back down to the horizon to give a sense of a stable landing.

Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator

[Forty Two Tenfold]

The real question is "Where's the KABOOM? [youtube.com]"

Re:

[Chris Mattern]

There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!

Re:

[wakeboarder]

Don't you mean 'mars shattering'?

Re:

[lorinc]

This is so cool!

Re:

[Dutch Gun]

Yes, the supplied link mentions audio, but video of the landing is provided: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

Re:

[wakeboarder]

Good catch, I watched the video but quit because it looked like another control room video with only audio.

Re:

[Immerman]

Loved the video, but I never found the audio. Unless it's included in the video at such low volume that it's completely drowned out by the talking, etc.

Re:The real question is...

[PPH]

No. Martians were humming the soundtrack to The Little Mermaid and the video has been blocked by copyright filters [slashdot.org].

Audio link removed?

[Tablizer]

It seems NASA changed the page. The audio link has been removed. I Googled an alleged copy on Sound Cloud, but just heard electronic static and one click. No breeze sound like the description claimed.

Re:

[caseih]

No it's still there. Just listened to it.

Re:

[Tablizer]

The two bars with the orange circles with black arrows are new. I didn't see those before. Maybe my browser needed a reboot?

Re:

[Tablizer]

Correction: white arrows.

Re:

[Ol Olsoc]

Do we get video of the landing eventually? I really want to see video.

Thunderfoot had a nice analysis of the landing video that I watched last night. It was also fun to listen to him get excited and in non-sarcastic mode.

And just to keep this Thunderfootish, I'll note that not a single Dragon capsule was to be seen on the video.

First audio ever from Mars:

[Tablizer]

Transcription: "Go home, Yanky!"

The first audio recording of sounds from Mars:

[Merk42]

ACK ACK ACK ACK!

Re:

[Tablizer]

"Look! My vewy own pet wobot bunny wabbit to hold and hug and ~^ & - [NO CARRIER]

Re:

[Ol Olsoc]

ACK ACK ACK ACK!

Some wag photoshopped Ted Cruz with his vacation suitcase into the first image.

Re:

[DeBaas]

FIN

The "first"?

[ve3oat]

I thought they had a microphone on an earlier mission to record the sound of the wind.

Re:The "first"?

[Cpt_Kirks]

IIRC, two other missions. Neither one worked, or the probe failed.

Re:The "first"?

[StupendousMan]

Taken from the Planetary Society's website:

Planetary Society members and supporters funded the world's first Mars microphone on NASA's Mars Polar Lander, which launched in 1999. It was the first citizen-funded science experiment to fly to another world. Sadly, the spacecraft crashed on Mars later that year. We were scheduled to refly the microphone experiment on a French Mars mission called Netlander that was ultimately canceled in 2004. NASA's Mars Phoenix lander had a microphone aboard, but it had to be turned off before launch due to last-minute technical difficulties.

Read more at https://www.planetary.org/sci-... [planetary.org]

Re:

[sysrammer]

I too thought that I remembered hearing the Winds of Mars(tm). But all the goggling I did showed that, indeed, Perserverance's mic is the first operational on Mars.

Anyways, I was about to chalk it to one of those multiverse melds that happen occasionally, and in my new timeline it never happened. Then, I thought, let's tune the goggle search (DDG actually, I'm no loof), and looked for pre-2019, and lone behold: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/1... [nytimes.com]

So, there it was. They used their seismometers. Clever.

But I sti

Dirigibles on Jupiter.

[Ostracus]

It reinforces the remarkable level of engineering and precision that is required to build and fly a vehicle to the Red Planet.

Just wait till we're puttering around the Jovian atmosphere.

Re:

[Ol Olsoc]

It reinforces the remarkable level of engineering and precision that is required to build and fly a vehicle to the Red Planet.

Just wait till we're puttering around the Jovian atmosphere.

What? They've been landing Dragon capsules with people on Mars since 2017

RIAA strikes here too...

[tanveer1979]

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/def... [nasa.gov]

Video has been taken down due to copyright violation

MPA strikes here too...

[Ostracus]

That would be the Martian Picture Association.

Re:

[waspleg]

It's underwhelming... [techcrunch.com]

Re:

[dacut]

It's up on the NASA Mars Site [nasa.gov].

Re:

[SirSlud]

Consider launching an expedition for friends.

Re:

[wakeboarder]

Then don't visit websites in capitalist countries

That was awesome!

[93 Escort Wagon]

My only (tiny) disappointment was - after the heat shield separated, we got to watch it fall quite a ways. I was hoping to see the "puff" of dust when it hit the surface - but it drifted out of the frame before that happened.

It was pretty incredible to see that extremely clear and detailed video, and to realize that had all happened 100+ million miles away from Earth!

Re:

[algaeman]

NASA was going to listen for the impacts from the discarded pieces with a seismometer. Anybody know if that worked?

Re:

[chispito]

NASA was going to listen for the impacts from the discarded pieces with a seismometer. Anybody know if that worked?

They said no, not from the latest information they had from the InSight team. Sorry, I remember that it was addressed, but I can't find the exact time of the reporter's question to link for you. They didn't say whether there was still data to review on it, I don't think.

Re:

[traveyes]

here you go [youtu.be]
From Curiosity's landing.

Re:

[Tablizer]

That looks like a lower frame rate that was then sped up for that particular video.

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

> I was hoping to see the "puff" of dust when it hit the surface

There will probably be a museum at the SpaceX city and they'll send out an autonomous vehicle to pick up the collectables for display.

In related news ...

[fahrbot-bot]

I thought this was an interesting read: The First 100 Days on Mars: How NASA’s Perseverance Rover Will Begin Its Mission [scientificamerican.com] ...

Re:

[stridebird]

Excellent link thanks dude

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Hot damn!

[quonset]

That was awesome. Personal favorite part was at the end where you could see the sky crane as it lowered Perseverance to the ground, then flew away to plummet somewhere else. That. Was. Awesome.

Second favorite was the heat shield separation. It almost didn't look real, like it was cgi.

Congratulations to everyone at NASA and elsewhere who had a hand in this achievement.

It's running Linux

[chispito]

From the news conference, there is an imaging subsystem running Linux, including FFMPEG [youtube.com] for local image and video compression.

Re:

[jimtheowl]

"It's running Linux" is misleading. Perseverance (the rover) is running VxWorks.

Ingenuity (the drone/copter), which is a technology demonstrator, runs Linux.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/lin... [pcmag.com]

https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[chispito]

Please re-read my post. There is a system for image processing on the rover that runs Linux, specifically, it's using FFMPEG. If you follow the link, it's timestamped to the part of the presentation yesterday where a project member shared this.

Re:

[chispito]

Facepalm. You're right. They're speaking in the context of Ingenuity. I apologize, and thank you for the correction.

Re:

[jimtheowl]

Honest mistake; you were not the only one. The presenters are not reading from a script, so it is difficult to be clear all the time.

video from NASA

[caulencontainer]

from Nasa chenel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]