Live Coverage of Perseverence Rover Landing on Mars

The Perseverance Rover will be attempting a landing on Mars this afternoon and here are some resources to allow you to watch the event in realtime or to bookmark and return to later. After the event is over, video clips, images, and other information will be added to the end of the article. There are also resource to assist you in learning more about this mission. 

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Mission Briefing from CBS 

(more background videos are posted below the live feeds)



NASA-TV



Mission Control Live: A 360 Degree Video
(can use VR Goggles or Google Cardboard)



Everyday Astronaut Hosted Stream
(Tim Dodd is a Citizen Journalist Who Covers Space)



PBS News Hour
(a restream of the NASA-TV Stream)



Background Information

Official NASA Website for the mission [MARS 2020]

Wikipedia has information about the flight in a format that is more easily accessed than the NASA website [Wikipedia]

The Insane Engineering of the Perseverance Rover



NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover VS Curiosity - What's New? What's Improved?



Reserved For Additional Coverage After the Landing

Update #1 4:30pm

The landing was successful and they've had some images from one of the low-resolution engineering hazard cameras. The rover carries 23 different cameras, ranging from low resolution and specialized cameras to a 20 megapixel color camera that can take single shots and do panoramic shots.

Here are the first images:

Here is a short video from SciNews that recaps the landing



Macon Media will post more images and video as they come in. Until then, here is a video shot by Veritasium (a citizen journalist who focuses on science toipics) of the Ingeniuty Drone that will be flown on Mars as part of this mission.

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Published at 1:30pam on Thursday, February 18, 2021

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MAVEN Launch Coverage

The newest mission to Mars, MAVEN, will be launching today at 1:28pm EST...provided the weather holds. I have embedded a video player that will show the launch live. I will replace with a recorded video of the launch later today. Below that is some information about the mission, beginning with a PSA by LeVar Burton.


More about the mission below:

MAVEN stands for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN





Mission Briefing:

Features on Mars resembling dry riverbeds and the discovery of minerals that form in the presence of water indicate that Mars once had a thicker atmosphere and was warm enough for liquid water to flow on the surface. However, that thick atmosphere was somehow lost to space. Scientists suspect that over millions of years, Mars lost 99% of its atmosphere as the planet’s core cooled and its magnetic field decayed, allowing the solar wind to sweep away most of the water and volatile compounds the atmosphere once contained.

The goal of MAVEN is to determine the history of the loss of atmospheric gases to space, providing answers about Martian climate evolution. By measuring the rate with which the atmosphere is currently escaping to space and gathering enough information about the relevant processes, scientists will be able to infer how the planet's atmosphere evolved over time. MAVEN will have four primary scientific objectives:

•Determine the role that loss of volatiles to space from the Mars atmosphere has played through time.
•Determine the current state of the upper atmosphere, ionosphere, and interactions with the solar wind.
•Determine the current rates of escape of neutral gases and ions to space and the processes controlling them.
•Determine the ratios of stable isotopes in the Martian atmosphere.

MAVEN is expected to reach Mars in September 2014. By then, the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite on board the Curiosity rover will have made similar surface measurements from Gale crater, which will help guide the interpretation of MAVEN's upper atmosphere measurements. MAVEN's measurements will also provide additional scientific context with which to test models for current methane formation in Mars.

More information can be found on the mission page at NASA. 

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Live Coverage of Mars Science Lab Landing Will the Curiosity Rover Survive? UPDATE: Curiosity Safe and Sound on Mars!

**2.54am** Here is video of the descent and landing, and the initial celebration.
These are good times to be living.


**1.48am** Mars Science Lab/Curiosity Rover has safely landed on Mars and a few images have already been transmitted back. 
Here is one that shows the shadow of Curiosity on Mars:

Shadow of Curiosity (a wonderful metaphor!)


The most advanced robot ever sent to another world is set to land on Aug. 5, 2012 (PDT). Will you be watching? (See video of the launch)

Mars Science Laboratory will deliver the Curiosity rover to the surface of Mars at approximately 10:31 p.m. PDT on Aug. 5 (1:31 a.m. EDT and 5:31 a.m. UTC on Aug. 6). Curiosity, carrying laboratory instruments to analyze samples of rocks, soil and atmosphere, will investigate whether Mars has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.

NASA TV will broadcast live from mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., during Curiosity’s critical entry, descent and landing phase.

Here is a short video explaining what the seven minutes of terror is about:



You can watch the NASA video stream (embedded immediately below) of the event, which is scheduled to start at 11:30pm Eastern Daylight Time, or you can watch it on a player that is further down on the page from SpaceVidCast. The landing (or crash) should take place at 1:31am:

NASA TV



With Mars looming ever larger in front of it, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft and its Curiosity rover are in the final stages of preparing for entry, descent and landing on the Red Planet at 10:31 p.m. PDT Aug. 5 (1:31 a.m. EDT Aug. 6). Curiosity remains in good health with all systems operating as expected. Today, the flight team uplinked and confirmed commands to make minor corrections to the spacecraft's navigation reference point parameters. This afternoon, as part of the onboard sequence of autonomous activities leading to the landing, catalyst bed heaters are being turned on to prepare the eight Mars Lander Engines that are part of MSL's descent propulsion system. As of 2:25 p.m. PDT (5:25 p.m. EDT), MSL was approximately 261,000 miles (420,039 kilometers) from Mars, closing in at a little more than 8,000 mph (about 3,600 meters per second).

Read more at the Mars Science Lab Mission Page.

Gale Crate Briefing

Gale Crater forms a large natural repository for a lot of Martian geologic history. This ancient impact scar has a diameter of about 150 kilometers (90 miles) and lies close to where the cratered highlands drop off onto the northern lowlands in Elysium. Based on its size and state of preservation, scientists estimate Gale formed 3.8 to 3.5 billion years ago.


What draws scientific interest most is a big mound of layered debris filling about a third of the crater's floor. Wrapping around the crater's central peak, visible at lower right in the image, the mound stands about 5.5 km (3.4 mi) higher than the northern crater floor and about 4.5 km (2.8 mi) above the southern floor. The mound's highest parts even rise somewhat higher than Gale's southern rim.

Read more at Mars Odyssey THEMIS

SpaceVidCast Live





The people at SpaceVidCast provide the world's best Citizen Journalist coverage of all things space.

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Watch Mars Science Lab/Curiosity Rover Launch Live

**update** Here is video of the launch:



Come August of next year, there will be seven minutes of terror when the vehicle reaches Mars. I hope to be able to provide you with live coverage of that event as well.



The Mars Scie3nce Lab is scheduled to launch between 10.02 and 11.45am Eastern Time today. I have embedded video players for you to watch the launch live.


JPL animation of the journey and landing of the Mars Science Lab.

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The Mars Science Laboratory is a National Aeronautics and Space Administration mission with the aim to land and operate a rover named Curiosity on the surface of Mars. The MSL is scheduled to launch November 26, 2011 (between 10:02 am - 11:45 am EST/usa) and to land on Mars at Gale Crater between August 6 and August 20, 2012. It will attempt to perform the first-ever precision landing on Mars. The rover Curiosity will help assess Mars' habitability, that is, whether Mars is, or ever was an environment able to support microbial life. It will also analyze samples scooped up from the soil and drilled powders from rocks.


Curiosity will be five times as large, and carry more than ten times the mass of scientific instruments as the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit or Opportunity. The MSL rover Curiosity will be launched by an Atlas V 541 rocket and will be expected to operate for at least 1 Martian year (668 Martian sols/686 Earth days) as it explores with greater range than any previous Mars rover.


Mars Science Laboratory mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of Mars, and is a project managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of California Institute of Technology for NASA. The total cost of the MSL project is about US$2.5 billion.

Source: Wikipedia

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The Mars Science Lab is scheduled to launch today and I have embedded some video players for you to watch it on (after the launch, I will replace them with video of the launch so that you may return anytime and re-watch the launch).







NASA TV HD Player (click here to watch on a mobile device)


Curiosity Cam 5 a.m. PT (8 a.m. ET): - NASA's Mars Curiosity Launch NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft with the Curiosity rover is set to launch to the planet Mars aboard an Atlas V rocket on Nov. 26, 2011 from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The one hour and 43 minute launch window opens at 7:02 a.m. PST (10:02 a.m. EST).
Coverage of the launch will begin at 5 a.m. PST (8 a.m. EST) and conclude after spacecraft separation from the Atlas V occurs 53 minutes, 49 seconds after launch.

Follow the Curiosity rover on Twitter (@MarsCuriosity) and Facebook. Other places for launch coverage: NASA Launch Blog

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Cool Blue Dunes on Mars

view high-resolution photo here


The Abalos Undae dune field stretches westward, away from a portion (Abalos Colles) of the ice-rich north polar layered deposits that is separated from the main Planum Boreum dome by two large chasms. These dunes are special because their sands may have been derived from erosion of the Rupes Tenuis unit (the lowest stratigraphic unit in Planum Boreum, beneath the icier layers) during formation of the chasms. Some researches have argued that these chasms were formed partially by melting of the polar ice.

The enhanced color data illuminate differences in composition. The dunes appear blueish because of their basaltic composition, while the reddish-white areas are probably covered in dust. Upon close inspection, tiny ripples and grooves are visible on the surface of the dunes; these features are formed by wind action, as are the dunes themselves.

It is possible that the dunes are no longer migrating (the process of dune formation forces dunes to move in the direction of the main winds) and that the tiny ripples are the only active parts of the dunes today.

Find more cool photos of Mars at the HiRISE website. The above area in the above image is about three quarters of a mile wide!

HiRISE is the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The spacecraft is currently orbiting Mars approximately 13 times an (Earth) day. The Primary Science Phase (the main “mapping” phase of the mission) officially started on November 8, 2006, and was scheduled to last for two (Earth) years. It has recently been extended for two more (Earth) years!

For continuing updates, please visit the HiRISE Blog.

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Potential for Life on Mars?!?

Rumor has it that there will soon be a HUGE announcement on the possibility, and that President Bush has already been briefed.

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