As NASA's Perseverance rover reaches Mars on Thursday, the final leg of its journey, known as the "seven minutes of terror," will commence.
As scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab explain in the video above, the lander's journey from the top of the Martian atmosphere to the planet's surface is a precise, seven-minute sequence. And once it begins, scientists on Earth have no control over it. It takes 14 minutes to get data back to Earth from Mars, so everyone back home must wait seven agonizing minutes to know if the rover's made it through its harrowing, high-speed entry and descent into its hopefully soft landing. While Perseverance's entry, descent, and landing sequence borrows a lot from the Curiosity rover, it has some added navigational tech to help scan the terrain below and make a more precise and informed landing in the final stage. Read more...
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