Now safely on the ground in Mars’ Jezero Crater, the Perseverance rover is set for what could be a game-changing mission of discovery: a search for signs of past Martian life in the river-deposited sediments of what was probably, long ago, a lake bottom. On Monday, NASA posted the above video footage of the rover’s descent and touchdown on the planet on Thursday.
“The views include a camera looking down from the spacecraft’s descent stage (a kind of rocket-powered jet pack that helps fly the rover to its landing site), a camera on the rover looking up at the descent stage, a camera on the top of the aeroshell (a capsule protecting the rover) looking up at that parachute, and a camera on the bottom of the rover looking down at the Martian surface,” NASA said.