NASA Perseverance Mars Landing Interactive Simulation

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Link: Mars 2020 Mission Visualization [NASA.gov]

 

 

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Link: Location Map for Perseverance Rover [NASA Mars]

 

 

About This Map

 

Scroll and pan around this map to see the landing site for the Mars Perseverance rover at Jezero Crater. The landing area is marked with a blue ellipse and is the zone the team is targeting. The goal of the mission is to seek signs of ancient life and collect samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and dust) for possible return to Earth.

 

This map is composed of two layers: a grayscale Jezero Crater map, and a true-color base map. The greyscale base map was created with images from the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, while the color base map is from the European Space Agency Mars Express High Resolution Stereo camera. Some color processing has been applied to highlight surface features. The original image can be found here. A high-resolution Digital Elevation Model was created from the images to provide critical information for rover drivers, who need to know how steep the hills are as they plan a path forward through this rocky terrain.

 

Engineers created this experience with software used by the mission team who decide where Perseverance will explore, and how to get there. Each dot represents the end point of a drive and is labeled with the day, or sol, on Mars, that the rover stopped.

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Watch an epic journey unfold on Thursday, Feb. 18 as our Perseverance rover lands on Mars. To reach the surface of the Red Planet, the rover has to survive the harrowing final phase known as Entry, Descent, and Landing.

 

Only then can the rover – the biggest, heaviest, cleanest, and most sophisticated six-wheeled robot ever launched into space – search Jezero Crater for signs of ancient life and collect samples that will eventually be returned to Earth.

 

Tune in to a live video feed of key landing activities and commentary from Mission Control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

 

Perseverance is expected to touchdown on Mars at about 8:55 pm this evening.

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Perseverance touchdown confirmed!

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Link: Perseverance Rover's First Image from Mars [NASA Mars]

 

 

February 18, 2021

 

This is the first image NASA’s Perseverance rover sent back after touching down on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021. The view, from one of Perseverance’s Hazard Cameras, is partially obscured by a dust cover.

 

A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.

 

Subsequent missions, currently under consideration by NASA in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these cached samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

 

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California built and manages operations of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover for NASA.

 

For more information about the mission, go to: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020

 

Credit

 

NASA/JPL-Caltech

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Perseverance target landing zone (blue circle) vs actual landing:

 

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Link: Images from the Mars Perseverance Rover [NASA Mars]

 

[Dos_Box]

Watched it live last night, very happy to see the sky crane delivery method isn't a one trick pony

And I'm betting so were the NASA staff too!

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NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance mission captured thrilling footage of its rover landing in Mars' Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021. The real footage in this video was captured by several cameras that are part of the rover's entry, descent, and landing suite. The views include a camera looking down from the spacecraft's descent stage (a kind of rocket-powered jet pack that helps fly the rover to its landing site), a camera on the rover looking up at the descent stage, a camera on the top of the aeroshell (a capsule protecting the rover) looking up at that parachute, and a camera on the bottom of the rover looking down at the Martian surface.

 

The audio embedded in the video comes from the mission control call-outs during entry, descent, and landing.

[jthompson]

Love that. The way it hunts for a good landing spot and then you see dust kicking up from the surface, it has definite parallels with the Apollo 11 landing footage. I don't remember footage quite like that from the Curiosity landing, so it's really cool to see.

[Dos_Box]

Love that. The way it hunts for a good landing spot and then you see dust kicking up from the surface, it has definite parallels with the Apollo 11 landing footage. I don't remember footage quite like that from the Curiosity landing, so it's really cool to see.

 

Curiosity was launched in 2011, so probably being built/planned from the early 2000's. I'd guess that small, light, rugged cameras as well as the bandwidth needed to send the footage just weren't a thing then

[jthompson]

Curiosity was launched in 2011, so probably being built/planned from the early 2000's. I'd guess that small, light, rugged cameras as well as the bandwidth needed to send the footage just weren't a thing then

 

Yeah, I guess so. I did see a quote about how the EDL cameras were basically just off-the-shelf kit.

 

From: https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/22/22295739/nasa-perseverance-rover-landing-mars-video-footage:

Imaging company FLIR provided the four cameras, and NASA made little to no modifications to them. “You can purchase the same camera off the internet,” Dave Gruel, lead engineer for Mars 2020’s EDL Camera system, said at the press conference.

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Link 1:

[Emily Calandrelli Video Tweet]

 

So you know how NASA sent a secret message to Mars?

 

@FrenchTech_paf figured it out.

 

Dare mighty things

 

Click the link above for the video.

 

Link 2:

[Picture Tweet]

 

Here's the explanation :

 

 

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Shortly after touchdown on Mars, Perseverance's right rear hazcam captured 2 images of the sky crane impact site prior to the camera's dust covers being removed. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter imagery of impact site is show here as well...

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Link 1:

[Emily Calandrelli Video Tweet]

 

So you know how NASA sent a secret message to Mars?

 

@FrenchTech_paf figured it out.

 

Dare mighty things

 

Click the link above for the video.

 

Link 2:

[Picture Tweet]

 

Here's the explanation :

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]60931[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]60932[/ATTACH]

 

 

 

Mars Decoder Ring: This annotated image was taken during the landing of the Perseverance rover on Feb. 18, 2021. Using binary code, two messages were encoded in the parachute: DARE MIGHTY THINGS and the GPS coordinates of an area by JPL’s visitor center. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

 

 

Watch as NASA tests a new parachute for landing the Mars 2020 rover on the Red Planet. On Sept. 7, NASA’s ASPIRE project broke a record when its rocket-launched parachute deployed in 4-10ths of a second—the fastest inflation of this size chute in history...

 

Posted on YouTube: 26^th October 2018

 

Link:

[YouTube Playlist: 172 videos in the list]

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Link: A 1990s iMac Processor Powers NASA’s Perseverance Rover [Gizmodo.com]

 

As we watched NASA put a rover on Mars last month, it definitely seemed like the agency had to be using some sort of high-tech processor in its machine. Surely the rover is built on something much more powerful than the components in devices us civilians use, right? But while NASA is technically using a specialized processor to power the Perseverance rover, it’s not far removed from the world of consumer electronics—about 23 years ago.

 

NewScientist reports that the Perseverance rover is powered by a PowerPC 750 processor, which was used in Apple’s original 1998 iMac G3—you remember, the iconic, colorful, see-through desktop. If the PowerPC name sounds familiar, it’s probably because those are the RISC CPUs Apple used in its computers before switching to Intel. (Although now the company is back on the RISC train with its homegrown M1 processor.)

 

The PowerPC 750 was a single-core, 233MHz processor, and compared to the multi-core, 5.0GHz-plus frequencies modern consumer chips can achieve, 233MHz is incredibly slow. But the 750 was the first to incorporate dynamic branch prediction, which is still used in modern processors today. Basically, the CPU architecture is making an educated guess on what instructions the CPU is going to process as a way to improve efficiency. The more information that’s processed, the better the chip gets at predicting what it needs to do next.

 

However, there’s a major difference between the iMac’s CPU and the one inside the Perseverance rover. BAE Systems manufactures the radiation-hardened version of the PowerPC 750, dubbed RAD750, which can withstand 200,000 to 1,000,000 Rads and temperatures between −55 and 125 degrees Celsius (-67 and 257 degrees Fahrenheit). Mars doesn’t have the same type of atmosphere as Earth, which protects us from the the sun’s rays, so one flash of sunlight and it’s all over for the Mars rover before its adventure can begin. Each one costs more than $200,000, so some extra protection is necessary.

 

“A charged particle that’s racing through the galaxy can pass through a device and wreak havoc,” James LaRosa at BAE Systems told NewScientist. “It can literally knock electrons loose; it can cause electronic noise and signal spikes within the circuit.”

 

But why use a processor old enough to remember when Eve 6 released its first album? It has nothing to do with cost—those old processors are the best ones for the job because they are reliable. NASA’s Orion spacecraft, for instance, used the same RAD750 processor.

 

“Compared to the [intel] Core i5 in your laptop, it’s much slower…it’s probably not any faster than your smartphone,” Matt Lemke, NASA’s deputy manager for Orion’s avionics, told The Space Review back in 2014. “But it’s not about the speed as much as the ruggedness and the reliability. I need to make sure it will always work.”

 

Taking that into consideration, it’s reasonable that NASA would choose older technology over the new stuff. After all, when you’re spending $2.7 billion to land a robot on Mars, it’s important that your tech is reliable enough to stand the test of time—down to the tiniest soldered circuits. Currently, the RAD750 powers around 100 satellites orbiting Earth, which includes GPS, imaging, and weather data as well as various military satellites. Not one of those has failed, according to LaRosa.

[jthompson]

If it's named RAD it really is from the 90's!

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Link: xkcd: Ingenuity

 

 

Mouseover Text:

 

Plot twist: Thanks to [mumble mumble] second-order [mumble] Rayleigh-Taylor [mumble] turbulent [mumble] shear, it turns out powered flight is way EASIER on Mars!

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https://youtu.be/ND7YO715QOE

 

Up, up, and away! The Ingenuity #MarsHelicopter​ is set to make history. It will make the first attempt at powered flight on another planet late on Sunday, April 11. Don’t miss your chance to watch live with helicopter team in mission control beginning at 3:30 a.m. EDT (12:30 a.m. PDT/ 7:30 a.m. UTC) Monday, April 12 as they receive the data and find out if they were successful. Come along for the ride and ask questions during the briefing.

 

*12:30 a.m. PDT/ 7:30 a.m. UTC = 8:30 am

 

Summary: Take off expected at 8:30 am, Monday 12^th of April.

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Link: Mars Helicopter Flight Delayed to No Earlier than April 14 [NASA Mars]

 

Based on data from the Ingenuity Mars helicopter that arrived late Friday night, NASA has chosen to reschedule the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s first experimental flight to no earlier than April 14.

 

During a high-speed spin test of the rotors on Friday, the command sequence controlling the test ended early due to a “watchdog” timer expiration. This occurred as it was trying to transition the flight computer from ‘Pre-Flight’ to ‘Flight’ mode. The helicopter is safe and healthy and communicated its full telemetry set to Earth.

 

The watchdog timer oversees the command sequence and alerts the system to any potential issues. It helps the system stay safe by not proceeding if an issue is observed and worked as planned.

 

The helicopter team is reviewing telemetry to diagnose and understand the issue. Following that, they will reschedule the full-speed test.

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Live at 11:15 (approximately 3 hours at the time of posting)

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Link:

[NASA Text Reply To Arnold Schwarzenegger Video Tweet]

 

When @Schwarzenegger tells you to do something – you do it. #MarsHelicopter

 

 

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Link: Ingenuity’s First Black-and-White Image From the Air [NASA.gov]

 

 

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter took this shot, capturing its own shadow, while hovering over the Martian surface on April 19, 2021, during the first instance of powered, controlled flight on another planet. It used its navigation camera, which autonomously tracks the ground during flight.

 

The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter was built by JPL, which also manages this technology demonstration project for NASA Headquarters. It is supported by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, and Space Technology Mission Directorate. NASA’s Ames Research Center and Langley Research Center provided significant flight performance analysis and technical assistance during Ingenuity’s development.

 

A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

 

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

 

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

 

JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

 

For more about Perseverance:

 

mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

 

nasa.gov/perseverance

 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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