NASA Perseverance Rover Begins Terrifying Descent to Search for Martian Life
NASA's Perseverance rover faces a harrowing "seven minutes of terror" as it attempts to land on Mars to search for ancient extraterrestrial life in Jezero crater.
NASA's Perseverance rover attempts a harrowing landing on Mars, enduring what scientists call "seven minutes of terror" as it plunges into the Martian atmosphere at 20,000 kilometers per hour. Because of an 11-minute communication delay between Earth and Mars, mission control has no real-time way to know if the spacecraft survives the extreme 1,300 °C temperatures or the high-speed descent.
About four minutes into the entry, descent, and landing phase, the spacecraft deploys a massive 21-meter parachute while still traveling at 1,500 km/h. After jettisoning its protective heat shield, the rover relies on advanced radar instruments, cameras, and a new Terrain-Relative Navigation system to actively scan the landscape and find a safe landing spot.
If Perseverance successfully sticks this complex landing, it explores Jezero crater, a dried-up ancient lake bed that holds the best potential for finding fossilized remains of past microbial life. This ambitious mission represents one of NASA's most significant attempts yet to answer the ultimate question of whether life ever existed on the red planet.