Extra-terrestrial – There has never been anything like it: the Mars rover sent the video of its landing

(dpa)

 The  videos show the last eleven kilometers of the “Perseverance” route (in German, for example: stamina). For example, you can see how the parachute opens.  The  surface on which the rover lands is also visible.

 The  microphones on board the rover did not send any useful data from the landing – but later sent the first ever sound recordings from the surface of Mars, it said. Among other things, something can be heard on them that sounds like a gust of wind. New photos were also published.

“ The se videos are incredible,” said NASA manager Mike Watkins at a media conference on Monday. “We all watched them many, many times over the weekend.”

And now: the first flight over another planet

 The  small “Ingenuity” helicopter on board the rover had previously sent its first status report to the control center in Pasadena, California – and according to NASA experts, it appears to be “working perfectly”. “Ingenuity” (in German: ingenuity) is still attached to the underside of “Perseverance”. But in 30 to 60 days the helicopter is supposed to explore Mars from a bird’s eye view. It would be the first flight of an aircraft over another planet.

 The  “Perseverance” rover, weighing around 1,000 kilograms and the size of a small car, landed on Thursday – after 203 days of flight and 472 million kilometers traveled – with a risky maneuver in a dry lake called “Jezero Crater”. Perseverance is to investigate this lake with a diameter of around 45 kilometers over the next two years.

 The  development and construction of the approximately 2.5 billion dollars (about 2.2 billion euros) rover had taken eight years. He is supposed to search for traces of previous microbial life on Mars and to research the climate and geology of the planet.