NASA’s Perseverance Rover and Ingenuity Mars Helicopter landed on Mars today at around 3:55 PM ET. Launched at the end of July 2020, Perseverance traveled 292.5 million miles from Earth to Mars. The rover will explore Jezero Crater, the site of an ancient lake that existed 3.9 billion years ago, and search for microfossils in the rocks and soil there. The helicopter is a demo to test powered flights on other planets.
Unfortunately, you couldn’t watching the landing in real time, but there are plenty of other ways to stay updated on the landing.
NASA’s countdown and landing commentary livestream will begin today at 2:15 PM ET. Tune in via NASA’s public TV channel, website, app, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitch, Daily Motion or THETA.TV. NASA’s mission control team will be able to confirm whether the rover safely landed on the surface of Mars. We’ve embedded the livestream atop this page as well.
The Perseverance Rover also Twitter and Facebook accounts, where you can expect updates from the mission team from the perspective of the rover.
“If there’s one thing we know, it’s that landing on Mars is never easy,” said Marc Etkind, NASA associate administrator for communications, in a statement. “But as NASA’s fifth Mars rover, Perseverance has an extraordinary engineering pedigree and mission team.”
Just weeks after the landing, if all goes according to plan, cameras and microphones on the spacecraft will show the rover’s perspective for the first time.
Here is NASA’s webcast schedule that will provide additional updates on the Mars 2020 mission.
Thursday, Feb. 18 (landing day) and beyond
Landing day webcasts on NASA TV/JPL YouTube
- 2:15 p.m. EST: NASA Mars rover Perseverance landing webcast begins
- 2:30 p.m. EST: NASA’s Spanish-language Perseverance landing webcast begins
- 3:55 p.m. EST: LANDING TIME for Mars rover Perseverance
- Around 5:30 p.m. EST: Post landing press conference.
Post-landing update briefings NASA TV/JPL YouTube
- Friday, Feb. 19 at 1 p.m. EST: Perseverance rover update.
- Monday, Feb. 22 at 2 PM EST: Perseverance rover update.
Editor’s Note: Follow The Robot Report’s Special Coverage of Mars 2020.
Update at 4:02 PM ET: The image below is the first photo Perseverance captured on Mars:
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