Upcoming landing of the Perseverance rover on Mars

[Gary Fogel]

Hi Willowmereans,

 

Last July, NASA launched its latest rover Perseverance on its mission to explore the surface of Mars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_2020

 

The spacecraft is now finally nearing Mars and will make its landing this Thursday. NASA is arranging lots of educational content for this historic landing – you can review that content for high school, middle school, elementary school kids here:

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/timeline/landing/watch-online/

And from that same link you can also watch the live feed of the landing on Thursday starting at 11:15am Pacific. The mission is being controlled by NASA-JPL in Pasadena just 2 hours up the road from us.

 

Additional fun stuff for families here

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/timeline/landing/

 

So far humans have about a 40% success rate for landing things on Mars, so we’ll see if it’s a success or not. However if successful, Perseverance also carries on board it a small robotic helicopter called Ingenuity with the hope of making the first rotorcraft flight on another planet in human history.

 

Have fun,

Gary