You can finally exhale. NASA’s Perseverance rover is safe and sound on Mars.
At approximately 3:55 p.m. EST on Thursday, February 18, 2021, NASA mission control erupted in jubilation upon receiving confirmation that their latest interplanetary rover made it to the martian surface unscathed.
Perseverance itself actually landed some 11 minutes before NASA was able to confirm its touchdown. But the vast distance between Earth and Mars meant it took the rover’s OK signal nearly a dozen agonizing minutes to race between the planets. However, those 11 minutes are just blink of the eye compared to the roughly seven-month spaceflight Perseverance endured while traveling to the Red Planet.
The landing went about as well as possible, too.
According to Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, in a
post-landing press conference: “What you should know is that every time we do a launch or do a landing, we get two plans. One plan is the one we want to do. And then there’s that second plan, which is right here — that’s the contingency plan.”
Zurbuchen then stood up, lifted a thin stack of lightly leafed-through papers into the air, and triumphantly tore them apart while calling out, “Here’s for the contingency plan!”
Perseverance guides itself to safety
NASA’s latest rover was actually the third spacecraft to arrive at Mars this month. On February 9, the
United Arab Emirates’ Hope probe entered orbit around the Red Planet — marking the start of the country’s first interplanetary mission. Then a day later on February 10,
China’s Tianwen-1 spacecraft entered orbit around Mars, though the onboard rover isn’t expected to attempt a landing until around May.