LIVE: Perseverance landing on Mars (starts on 18 Feb 2021 at 20:00 CET)
Are you ready for Perseverance’s landing on Mars? Days to the landing are counting down. You can watch the landing live also with me here on my blog. Stay tuned, we’re landing on 18 February 2021 at 21:00 CET!
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LIVE stream of NASA’s Perseverance landing on Mars:
Countdown to landing of Perseverance on Mars:
Countdown ended, Perseverance successfully landed on Mars 🙂
LIVE coverage will begin on this page at 20:00 CET on February 18, 2021.
Landing location: Jezero
Weather on Mars (landing location): air temperature range between -16 °C to -73 °C
Day on in the landing location: 24 h 37 min
A radio signal travels from Mars to Earth (for today): 11 min 22 sec
EDL (Entry, Descent, Landing):
- Cruise stage separation: The part of the spacecraft that has been flying Perseverance – with NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter attached to its belly – through space for the last six-and-a-half months will separate from the entry capsule at about 21:38 CET.
- Atmospheric entry: The spacecraft is expected to hit the top of the Martian atmosphere traveling at about 19 500 kph at 21:48 CET.
- Peak heating: Friction from the atmosphere will heat up the bottom of the spacecraft to temperatures as high as about 1300 degrees Celsius at 21:49 CET.
- Parachute deployment: The spacecraft will deploy its parachute at supersonic speed at around 21:52 CET. The exact deployment time is based on the new Range Trigger technology, which improves the precision of the spacecraft’s ability to hit a landing target.
- Heat shield separation: The protective bottom of the entry capsule will detach about 20 seconds after the parachute deployment. This allows the rover to use a radar to determine how far it is from the ground and employ its Terrain-Relative Navigation technology to find a safe landing site.
- Back shell separation: The back half of the entry capsule that is fastened to the parachute will separate from the rover and its “jetpack” (known as the descent stage) at 21:54 CET. The jetpack will use retrorockets to slow down and fly to the landing site.
- Touchdown: The spacecraft’s descent stage, using the sky crane maneuver, will lower the rover down to the surface on nylon tethers. The rover is expected to touch down on the surface of Mars at a human walking speed of about 2.7 kph at around 21:55 CET.
The video above: After nearly 300 million miles (470 million km), NASA’s Perseverance rover completes its journey to Mars on Feb. 18, 2021. But, to reach the surface of the Red Planet, it has to survive the harrowing final phase known as Entry, Descent, and Landing.
~Jozef
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Useful resources for further study:
JPL YouTube: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020
Used resources:
- NASA’s Next Mars Rover Is Ready for the Most Precise Landing Yet. (2021, February 16). JPL. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-next-mars-rover-is-ready-for-the-most-precise-landing-yet
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
