How You Can Endure 7 Minutes Of ‘Nail-Biting Terror’ With NASA As It Tries To Land Its $2.9 Billion ‘Percy’ Rover On Mars
An illustration of NASA’s Perseverance rover touchdown safely on Mars. Hundreds of essential occasions … [+]
NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA’s Mars 2020 mission is about to achieve the “red planet” and make a daring touchdown.
Its $2.9 billion Perseverance rover—nicknamed “Percy”—would be the largest, heaviest and most refined rover ever despatched to Mars.
Following on-line what occurs to “Percy” (and the solar-powered Ingenuity Mars Helicopter experiment strapped to its stomach) live on NASA TV on YouTube on Thursday, February 18 goes to contain some nervous moments.
Here’s the way to comply with all the pieces on-line:
When is NASA touchdown on Mars?
Touchdown is scheduled for about 12:55 p.m. PST/3:55 p.m. EST on Thursday, February 18, 2021. That’s 8:55 p.m. GMT/UTC and 9:55 p.m. CET.
There’s a pleasant countdown timer here.
How to stream NASA’s Mars touchdown stay
Live protection and commentary of the touchdown shall be beamed throughout the globe from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California from 1 hour 40 minutes earlier than the touchdown time (11:15 a.m. PST/2:15 p.m. EST).
You can watch on NASA TV, NASA’s website, YouTube, Twitch and the NASA App. There’s additionally a Spanish-language stream.
How to comply with NASA’s Mars touchdown on-line
For fixed updates from NASA’s JPL in the course of the descent go to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
There’s additionally a particular virtual guest experience that gives you notifications and mission updates, in addition to a toolkit of assets and multimedia.
What will occur throughout NASA’s Mars touchdown?
It’s going to be a nail-biting “seven minutes of terror” as “Percy” slows down and makes an attempt to land in that quick time. It shall be considerably much like the daring landing of NASA’s Curiosity rover back in 2012.
It additionally takes about seven minutes for the indicators to get again to Earth from Mars, so by the point we hear that “Percy” has entered the Martian environment it’s going to have already landed … or crashed.
The seven minutes goes to go one thing like this:
- Descend by means of Martian environment at 12,000 mph/20,000 kph.
- A parachute and powered descent to sluggish the rover right down to about 2 mph/3 kph.
- A “sky crane” on the descent stage to decrease the rover on three cables to land on six wheels at Jezero Crater.
- Touchdown on Mars!
Jezero Crater on Mars, the touchdown website for NASA’s Mars 2020 mission. It was taken by devices on … [+]
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/JHU-APL
Where is ‘Percy’ going to land?
The 28 miles/45 kilometers-wide Jezero Crater is considered a 4 billion-year-old river delta—and it’s simply potential that its clay may maintain indicators of historical microbial life. It’s on the western aspect of Isidis Planitia, a large influence basin simply north of the Martian equator.
Where to see the primary pictures from Mars
As quickly as “Percy” lands in Jezero Crater it should ship again pictures—and this is where you can see them.
The rover can be outfitted with a collection of cameras to document the descent, so we should always get a couple of “as-live” photos, too.
Wishing you clear skies and broad eyes.
