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Humans had never seen a spacecraft land on another planet:
Never before, in all of our millions of years, have humans directly observed a spacecraft landing on another planet. Until now.
On Monday, NASA released a video (embedded below) that included several viewpoints from the descent of Mars Perseverance to the surface of the red planet last week. A camera on the back shell captured a view of the parachute deploying, and cameras on the descent stage and rover itself captured the final seconds of the landing.
"I can, and have, watched those videos for hours," said NASA's Al Chen, the lead for the entry, descent, and landing for Perseverance. "I find new stuff every time. I invite you to do so as well."
[...] Capturing this visceral footage was not mission critical, but it was a bonus. The space agency used ruggedized, off-the-shelf hardware to take this imagery. All told, about 30GB of data was captured during the descent, totaling 23,000 images. Now that NASA has this information, it will be used to sharpen knowledge about future entry, descent, and landing technology on Mars and other worlds in the Solar System.
One landing issue brought into sharp focus in the new footage is the dust kicked up by the descent stage as it nears the surface of Mars and drops off the lander. It entirely shrouds Perseverance in a thick cloud. This will be an important issue as NASA contemplates landing larger spacecraft, and eventually human missions, on the red planet.
Descending into a rocket-induced dust and sand storm. And look at the large flying rock in the last frame! #PerseveranceRoverpic.twitter.com/7MEnqRhLj3
— Dr. Phil Metzger (@DrPhiltill) February 22, 2021
[...] There were more than just visual treats released on Monday during the Perseverance news conference. For the first time, a rover recorded audio and transmitted it back to Earth, capturing what sounded like a wind gust. "Who is going to compose the first piece of music with actual Mars sound?" asked Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's chief of science. Who, indeed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @04:25PM (1 child)
Duh, but this time if something went wrong we could have had a LOT of information after the fact about what went wrong.
Although TFA does not say how or if this information would have been transmitted back if the entire thing had gone splat.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 23 2021, @11:17PM
All the descent videos, including the videos taken by cameras in the descent stage, were stored in a dedicated computer system within the rover. These were then transmitted from the rover back to Earth well after the landing was finished.
This is why you can see in the video as soon as the rover lands, the down-look videos from the descent stage immediately stop (as once the cables are severed, the rover no longer receives video from the descent stage).
If the entire thing had gone splat then there would simply be no videos to look at.