After a 7 month journey, NASA's Perseverance Rover will (hopefully) land safely on Mars today.
We won't get live pictures or anything, in fact NASA won't know whether the touchdown has gone according to plan until some time after it happens, as there is an 11 minute delay in communications.
The final part of the landing sequence is referred to as the "seven minutes of terror", as the capsule enters the atmosphere of Mars, deploys a parachute at supersonic speeds, jettisons it's heat shield, scans for a safe landing spot, then ditches the parachute and uses something called the sky crane (a bunch of rockets to slow the descent supporting the rover on nylon cables) to drop it safely on the surface.
They should know what's what by 3.55pm ET (8.55 GMT).
Live NASA video:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm0b_ijaYMQ
We won't get live pictures or anything, in fact NASA won't know whether the touchdown has gone according to plan until some time after it happens, as there is an 11 minute delay in communications.
The final part of the landing sequence is referred to as the "seven minutes of terror", as the capsule enters the atmosphere of Mars, deploys a parachute at supersonic speeds, jettisons it's heat shield, scans for a safe landing spot, then ditches the parachute and uses something called the sky crane (a bunch of rockets to slow the descent supporting the rover on nylon cables) to drop it safely on the surface.
They should know what's what by 3.55pm ET (8.55 GMT).
Live NASA video:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm0b_ijaYMQ