Mars Rover Landing Video Released

NASA has shared the footage of its Mars rover’s landing from last Thursday, 18 February.

The event – dubbed “seven minutes of terror” – saw the machine, named “Perseverance”, descending at a rapid rate, but landed safely on the Red Planet.

The space agency released the footage on Monday, 22 February, after its mission team received video from the little robot – which is equipped with 23 cameras and two microphones.

Previous missions to the celestial body have seen a high failure rate, but now that Perseverance is on Mars’ surface, more audio snippets, images and videos are expected in the upcoming weeks.

Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement: “This video of Perserverance’s descent is the closest you can get to landing on Mars without putting on a pressure suit.”

He added: “It should become mandatory viewing for young women and men who not only want to explore other worlds and build the spacecraft that will take them there, but also want to be part of the diverse teams achieving all the audacious goals in our future.”