Perseverance Arrival on Mars

[Zinjanthropos]

Another nasa briefing scheduled for 11 am PST, 2 pm EST, 19:00 UTC. They are calling it "See Mars like never before!" and are promising new photos and video.

Will tune in. Installed the NASA channel on my Roku streaming device. It’s free in case anyone interested. 

Questions: This mission is focused on finding evidence for past or present life. Can Perseverance tell the difference between Earth microbes, in case of contamination and any Martian variety? Or does it just scoop up dirt for a following pickup mission to take home? If they do discover life, will they risk taking it back to Earth or make a pit stop at ISS or some other space bound lab for analysis? Or will they kill it first?

[Yazata]

Looks like the middle of Australia.

https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/stat...4228649984

Really extraordinary nasa video of the landing, watch the Martian surface coming up quickly, then the skycrane landing and the reaction in the JPL control room.

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/videos/?v=461

[C C]

Looks like the middle of Australia.

https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/stat...4228649984

Really extraordinary nasa video of the landing, watch the Martian surface coming up quickly, then the skycrane landing and the reaction in the JPL control room.

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/videos/?v=461

That glimpse of the sky crane rocketing off after the rover was dumped looked like something from an alien spacecraft movie. Quite a junkyard accumulating on Mars just from a single mission: Heat shield, back shell, parachute, etc.

[Zinjanthropos]

From iceandclimate: The Martian ground ice is deposited inside the porous soil (called the regolith) in various depths mainly depending on the latitude. In some areas at high latitude, around 50% of the mass in the underground is ice and the ground ice lies very close to the surface.

When rocket engines are firing near the Martian surface could there be some ice melt occurring and if so, as in the case of a Perseverance type landing, could droplets of water instantly freeze on the machine itself possibly covering camera lenses, sensing equipment to even jamming up the wheels? 

[Yazata]

All JPL photos from the Perserverance raw image archive. There are hundreds of photos there.

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/

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[Zinjanthropos]

Those pics and many more to come should generate a fresh round of pareidolia. Without looking it up I think they named the one rock The Harbour Seal which is a pretty good description. The 2nd pic in above post looks like a petrified sawed off tree trunk in my eyes. I wonder what people will make of all those flat stones laying about?

I saw one high altitude shot where a nearby land formation looked like that view people thought was a face looking back to Earth. Is landing area near there or was I seeing things? lol If so are they going to check it out?