The HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has done it again.
The imaging team captured the Perseverance rover as it descended through the Martian atmosphere and hung under its parachute.
Breathtaking.
Close-up of the Mars 2020 descent stage sweeping through the Martian atmosphere on February 18, 2021. Photo credit: NASA / JPL / University of Arizona.
If you feel like you’ve seen something like this before, you have done it. HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) captured both the Curiosity Rover 2012 and the Phoenix Lander 2008 on Mars. However, this does not detract from the performance of capturing a tiny spaceship that stinks through the atmosphere. Consider these statistics:
- MRO was approximately 700 kilometers from Perseverance at the time of recording.
- MRO was moving at approximately 3 kilometers per second (6,750 miles per hour).
- The endurance was likely moving around 140 meters per second.
“The extreme distance and high speeds of the two spaceships were challenging conditions that required precise timing. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had to both lean up and roll sharply to the left for HiRISE to see the persistence at the right moment,” wrote he HiRISE team member Shane Byrne on the HiRISE website.
The large picture also shows the old river delta that is the target of the Perseverance Mission in Jezero Crater.
But the HiRISE team wasn’t finished yet.
The day after Perseverance landed, they took photos of the landing site.
The first HiRISE image of the Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars as well as many parts of the descent system that brought it there safely. Photo credit: NASA / JPL / University of Arizona.
Visible is the persistence itself, the parachute, the parachute and the back shell, the remains of the descent step / Skycrane (which probably broke apart during the crash landing) and the heat shield. (The full version can be found here.)
On a scale, most of the HiRISE images are about 5 km wide and 10 to 13 km long. Each inserted square in the picture above is about 200 meters in diameter.
The rover sits in the middle of an explosion pattern created by the floating sky crane. The Skycrane fell a safe distance from the crash, creating a V-shaped debris pattern pointing back to the rover it came from.
If you haven’t seen the incredible video of Entry, Descent and Landing, do it now! You will see how all of these parts of the relegation phase do their job.
At the beginning of the landing sequence, Perseverance dropped his heat shield and parachute, which crashed in the various locations, but HiRISE also found them:
The Mars 2020 parachute that was thrown away on the surface of Mars. Photo credit: NASA / JPL / University of Arizona. The crashed heat shield of the Mars 2020 stage of descent. Photo credit: NASA / JPL / University of Arizona.
While these objects are now clearly visible on the surface of Mars, the HiRISE teams say that every object will suffer the fate of everything on Mars: they get dustier over time and slowly fade into the background. As always, HiRISE will continue to map the Perseverance landing site to track the rover’s progress and the changes to the other associated hardware parts.
You can see more images of our spacecraft and other objects on the surface of Mars as seen by the incredible HiRISE camera.
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