How NASA's $2 Billion Rover Landed Itself on Mars: "Seven Minutes of Terror"

Unsung Science

CBS News

Society & Culture, Earth Sciences, Science

4.9 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2021

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Perseverance, NASA's latest Mars rover, is a one-ton, $2 billion marvel. The plan was for it to enter the Mars atmosphere going 12,000 miles an hour. The problem: How do you slow it down enough to set it down gently on the surface? You can't use retro rockets, because they'd stir up so much dust, the rover’s cameras and instruments would be ruined. You can’t deliver Perseverance inside a larger spaceship, because the rover wouldn’t be able to drive out of the landing crater. You can’t even control the descent from Earth, because it takes so long for our signals to reach Mars; by the time the rover received a course-correction instruction, there’d be nothing left of it but a smoking wreck. Yet NASA pulled it off—with a nutty, Rube Goldberg-y, multi-stage, seven-minute-long, completely automated system involving a parachute, an airborne launch platform, and a cable.

Guest: Alan Chen, NASA Entry, Descent, and Landing Lead for the Mars 2020 mission.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	7 months after liftoff, the Perseverance Rover approached Mars going 12,000 miles an hour.
0:09.5	The problem for NASA, how to slow it down to a gentle touchdown.
0:13.7	You can't use rockets because their thrust would make a crater that would trap the rover.
0:20.0	And you can't control any of it from Earth.
0:22.8	It takes too long for a signal to reach Mars.
0:25.9	I had a little bit on the inside, right?
0:28.5	You can't do anything.
0:29.7	But NASA pulled it off with a 7 minute long chain of tricks involving a parachute, a jet pack, and a rope.
0:38.7	I'm David Pogue, and this is Unsung Science.
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	...

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