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Mars Exploration 1: Unmanned Missions (Probes; Rovers; etc.)

Video footage of the landing has been released.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-56159376

Awesome!
That heat shield being jettisoned from a height of 12km must have created quite a crater.
Also, given how thin the Martian atmosphere is supposed to be (especially at that altitude) I was surprised at how dramatically the parachute snaps open and the very rapid deceleration.
If the quality of the video is indicative of what is to come, we're in for some awesome footage in the months and years of Perseverance's mission (not to mention the helicopter drone)!
 
What an amazing achievement. Imagine seeing a Space X rocket land. My wish would be for some sort of camera/rover to be on the surface to film the landing from the ground up.

I'm excited about what they may discover but the landing excites me more.
 
Thats very good.

Is there a significance to the colour scheme of the parachute?
 
... Is there a significance to the colour scheme of the parachute?

Allegedly - yes ...
'Dare mighty things': hidden message found on Nasa Mars rover parachute

Internet sleuths claim to have decoded a hidden message displayed on the parachute that helped Nasa’s Perseverance Rover land safely on Mars last week. They claim that the phrase “Dare mighty things” – used as a motto by Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory – was encoded on the parachute using a pattern representing letters as binary computer code.

Reddit users and social media posters on Twitter noticed that the red-and-white pattern on the parachute looked deliberate, and arrived at the result by using the red to represent the figure one, and the white to represent zero.

Each of the concentric rings in the parachute’s pattern represents one of the words. The zeroes and ones need to be split up into chunks of 10 characters, and from that, adding 64 gives you the computer ASCII code representing a letter. For example, seven white stripes, a red stripe and then two more white stripes represents 0000000100, the binary for four. Adding 64 to that gives 68, the ASCII code for the letter D. ...

The challenge had been set by Nasa itself. While the pattern has a scientific purpose – it allows mission control to see the angle the parachute has deployed at and whether it has got twisted – during a live stream discussing the landing, one Nasa commentator said: “Sometimes we leave messages in our work for others to find. So we invite you all to give it a shot and show your work.” ...

The hi-tech fabric making up the parachute was created in Devon, emphasising the international nature of the effort to get Perseverance to the red planet. Heathcoat Fabrics of Tiverton said it was “very, very proud of the achievement”, with the director of the company’s woven fabric department, Peter Hill, saying it represented 15 years’ work. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.theguardian.com/science...en-message-found-on-nasa-mars-rover-parachute
 
Mars Rover accidentally draws penis and balls on Mars. Points deducted for no pubes.

amarspenis.jpeg


Nasa Mars Rover Accidentally Draws Penis On Red Planet | HuffPost UK (huffingtonpost.co.uk)
 
Meanwhile ... China's Tianwen-1 has entered a parking orbit to prepare for landing its rover sometime in the coming months.
China’s Mars craft enters parking orbit before landing rover

China says its Tianwen-1 spacecraft has entered a temporary parking orbit around Mars in anticipation of landing a rover on the red planet in the coming months.

The China National Space Administration said the spacecraft executed a maneuver to adjust its orbit early Wednesday morning Beijing time and will remain in the new orbit for about the next three months before attempting to land. During that time, it will be mapping the surface of Mars and using its cameras and other sensors to collect further data, particularly about its prospective landing site. ...

A successful bid to land Tianwen-1 would make China only the second country after the U.S. to place a spacecraft on Mars. China’s solar-powered vehicle, about the size of a golf cart, will collect data on underground water and look for evidence that the planet may have once harbored microscopic life. ...

FULL STORY: https://apnews.com/article/china-mars-rover-enters-orbit-4d6a32e39bdb73d4ec463e98e16f05c0
 
I thought only airplanes did that.
 
Not a sexy rover with go faster stripes...

...But probably a lot cheaper...
 
The latest full-colour photos are magnificent.

This one caught my eye, due to the darker colouring at the top of the mound.
May well just be shadow but, given that dribbles of briny water have been observed dribbling down crater walls (as discussed in another Mars thread), could the dark patches be indicative of moisture?

View attachment 35875

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mult...0667217530_000FDR_N0010052AUT_04096_034085J01
You can tell Mars is old, it still in sepia :p
 
... This one caught my eye, due to the darker colouring at the top of the mound.
May well just be shadow but, given that dribbles of briny water have been observed dribbling down crater walls (as discussed in another Mars thread), could the dark patches be indicative of moisture? ...

I'm not sure which elevated bit you're calling the 'mound'. If it's the ridge line in the middle distance I'm confident the dark patches are shadow. If it's the taller mass in the far distance I don't see anything that suggests something other than shadows.

I wouldn't think upwelling of subsurface brine would extend upward through elevated landforms.
 
I'm not sure which elevated bit you're calling the 'mound'. If it's the ridge line in the middle distance I'm confident the dark patches are shadow. If it's the taller mass in the far distance I don't see anything that suggests something other than shadows.

I wouldn't think upwelling of subsurface brine would extend upward through elevated landforms.

I suspect you're right about that.
It was specifically the dark patch here that caught my eye:

mars003.JPG

and made me recall several photos taken from orbit, showing dark streaks that appear when the temperature rises.

mars004.JPG
 
Based on the angle of shadows on the part of the rover, those are only shadows on Mars' surface due to the rough top of that mound.

Looking forward to learning how well the helicopter works; such would be an invaluable resource for future rover missions. Perhaps someday a helo could even scoop up samples from sites where a rover cannot safely go.
 
Looking to the right of the image I annotated above (snipped from the large panorama), there is another dark patch at the top of a ridge, with what appears to be a vertical dark streak beneath it. Hope Perseverance will head in that direction for a closer look:

mars.JPG
 
Based on the angle of shadows on the part of the rover, those are only shadows on Mars' surface due to the rough top of that mound.

Looking forward to learning how well the helicopter works; such would be an invaluable resource for future rover missions. Perhaps someday a helo could even scoop up samples from sites where a rover cannot safely go.
Will a helicopter work on Mars? I know they struggle a high altitude with low atmospheric pressure, i know when they started developing the Mars helo they theorised it was possible but it couldnt be tested practically on Earth
 
Will a helicopter work on Mars? I know they struggle a high altitude with low atmospheric pressure, i know when they started developing the Mars helo they theorised it was possible but it couldnt be tested practically on Earth

The parachute clearly worked extremely well, so the atmosphere, although thin, should be ample to generate lift from the rotor blades.
I'm sure the drone was thoroughly tested under low pressure conditions.
 
Based on the angle of shadows on the part of the rover, those are only shadows on Mars' surface due to the rough top of that mound.
There will soon be (or perhaps are already) images taken with sunlight in other angles. Will be easy to tell what's shadows then.
 
The latest full-colour photos are magnificent.

This one caught my eye, due to the darker colouring at the top of the mound.
May well just be shadow but, given that dribbles of briny water have been observed dribbling down crater walls (as discussed in another Mars thread), could the dark patches be indicative of moisture?

View attachment 35875

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mult...0667217530_000FDR_N0010052AUT_04096_034085J01

Looks just like Cromer beach, even the overflowing old barrel.
 
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