NASA's Mars rover, the Perseverance, has a robust social media presence. Here's what it looks like and sounds like on the red planet.
"I love rocks" is just one of many dispatches NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover has transmitted to Earth via its robust social media presence since arriving on the red planet on February 18. And no wonder. Launched on July 30 last year, the Perseverance's journey to Mars took a little more than six-and-a-half months. After such a long flight, we would wax poetic over rocks, too.
In all seriousness, the rover's social media feed over the past five days, since landing in the planet's Jezero Crater, has been nothing short of extraordinary. NASA's Youtube channel features a Perseverance Mars Rover playlist that chronicles major moments from every available angle and gives us landlubbers here on Earth a close-up HD look at the terrain and surface of Mars in a way that we've never seen before.
"From the moment of parachute inflation, the camera system covers the entirety of the descent process, showing some of the rover’s intense ride to Mars’ Jezero Crater," reads the description on the landing footage. "The footage from high-definition cameras aboard the spacecraft starts 7 miles (11km) above the surface, showing the supersonic deployment of the most massive parachute ever sent to another world and ends with the rover’s touchdown in the crater."
See also: NASA’s Perseverance Rover Makes Historic Landing On Mars
Meanwhile, over on Twitter, the NASA team has been consistently uploading observations, photos, and short film clips:
