NASA Perseverance Mars Rover Lands Today!

[Grimhogun]

Got to be kind of scary trying to fly something that takes a half hour to get any command you send it. I sure wouldn't want that job.

 

[Zeedox]

It's all pre-programmed autonomous flight.

But yeah, even waiting on the post-flight data would be pretty nail-biting.

 

[Hugo Stiglitz]

Arny weighs in:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1383876808295129093

I've always liked that guy.

 

[Zeedox]

https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/munfe2

 

[Gomez Adams]

It's really odd that as thin as the atmosphere is that dust should fly as if it's nearly earthlike.

 

[Zeedox]

I was amazed in a vacuum-box series video that flies could fly in very little pressure.

 

[Zeedox]

My next stroke of genius is can the helo down-blast be used to clear anyone elses solar panels.

 

[Hugo Stiglitz]

Still hard to believe we're playing with a drone on Mars. Way cool.

 

[Zeedox]

NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover Extracts First Oxygen From Red Planet – NASA Mars Exploration

The milestone, which the MOXIE instrument achieved by converting carbon dioxide into oxygen, points the way to future human exploration of the Red Planet.

mars.nasa.gov

The growing list of “firsts” for Perseverance, NASA’s newest six-wheeled robot on the Martian surface, includes converting some of the Red Planet’s thin, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere into oxygen. A toaster-size, experimental instrument aboard Perseverance called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) accomplished the task.

 

[Gomez Adams]

Very cool. Now if only there were enough of it.

 

[Hugo Stiglitz]

I wonder how much the copter costs. Seriously. Just curious to how much our little fun drone on Mars is worth.

 

[Zeedox]

'The sky, at least on Mars, may not be the limit': NASA's Ingenuity helicopter makes historic first flight

The NASA team watched at command headquarters as the first data, which included a grainy black and white image, confirmed the helicopter had succeeded.

www.abc.net.au

The Ingenuity helicopter was a last-minute addition to NASA's Perseverance rover, which landed on the Red Planet in February.

Built over three years at a cost of $US80 million ($105 million) from high-tech and off-the-shelf components, the helicopter had a singular mission: to prove it could fly.

Unlike drones on Earth, Ingenuity operates entirely autonomously based on a set of preprogrammed instructions and using its cameras and sensors to stay on track.