Free Astronomy Magazine March-April 2021

deltas rich in clay deposits – perfect for storing biological markers or, potentially, even fossils. It is hoped that the Mars 2020/Jezero Crater com- bination of technology and lo- cation will lead to great dis- coveries at an accelerated pace. While this advanced rover still lacks the dexterity and spon- taneity that a human re- searcher trained in geology would bring to the study of the Martian surface, advances in automation, machine learn- ing, and scaling mean that some future vehicular labora- tory on par with a living scien- tist may, in fact, still be de- livered and doing science be- fore any mission with a hu- man crew does find their way to the surface. For space scientists and enthu- siasts alike, the launches of July 2020 and anticipated ar- rivals in February 2021 were a welcome break from the on- going COVID pandemic. On the local afternoon of February 18 th at NASA Mission Control, seven 51 MARCH-APRIL 2021 MARS ROVERS T he first two images, taken through transparent lens covers, from Perseverance Hazard Cameras (Hazcams) after landing. [NASA/JPL-Caltech] N ASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance mission captured thrilling footage of its rover landing in Mars’ Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021. The real footage in this video was captured by several cameras that are part of the rover’s entry, descent, and landing suite. 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. The audio embedded in the video comes from the mission control call-outs during entry, descent, and landing. [NASA/JPL-Caltech] months and 292 million miles (472 million km) of anticipation abruptly transitioned into “seven minutes of terror,” the phrase NASA mission spe- cialists have used to describe the time during which the Perseverance delivery sys- tem entered orbit, deployed its parachute, jettisoned its aeroshell heat shield, and initiated its retro- rocket/skycrane system to slowly winch the rover to the ground be-