The first sounds recorded on Mars, rover landing
"I invite you now to if you would like to close your eyes and just imagine yourself sitting on the surface of Mars and listening to to the surroundings.”
NASA scientists on Monday released the first sights and sounds ever recorded on Mars, a light gust of wind on the planet's surface.
Vivid footage showed the rover, Perseverance, deploying its red-and-white supersonic parachute by way of a rocket-powered hovercraft and lowering its wheels to the ground in a plume of dust and smoke.
The project’s lead engineer described watching the most advanced rover ever developed take its place on Mars, "It gives me goosebumps every time I see it, just, it's just amazing.”
The footage was captured last Thursday from cameras mounted at different angles of the Perseverance landing craft as it passed through the planet’s thin atmosphere to gently touchdown inside a basin called the Jezero Crater.
The six-wheeled vehicle sailed through space for almost seven months, over nearly 300 miles.
The video montage of its landing was presented to reporters four days after the historic landing.
The chief imaging scientist behind the project explains what’s presented, "This is it. This is Mars. We're here in our place that we're going to be exploring over the next months and coming years.”
Scientists hope to extract samples from Martian rock for future analysis back on Earth - the first such specimens ever collected by humankind from another planet.
