Videos | An exceptional landing on Mars for NASA's spacecraft

Weather of Arabia - After a seven-month flight during which the NASA spacecraft covered a distance (483 million km), the "persevering" NASA spacecraft landed safely on Thursday (2/18-2021) on the surface of Mars, to start an ambitious mission to search for signs of life A precedent for Mars, getting soil and rock samples that could one day be brought back to Earth for laboratory study.

But the "persistent" rover had to endure seven minutes of panic until it reached the surface of the planet after entering the thin atmosphere of Mars. The spacecraft had to travel this distance and land alone. Mars is too far from Earth to allow technicians to control it. Landing, and there is a delay of 11 minutes in the arrival of the communication signals with the ground.

For this reason, the spacecraft was equipped with an heuristic navigation program, the Terrain Relative Navigation System ( TRN ), which allowed "perseverance" to land in a rugged area full of natural hazards. Landing on rough terrain is considered the most dangerous stage of the mission, and Mars is known for the difficulty of homing spacecraft on it.

"Perseverance" entered the thin Martian atmosphere at a speed of 19,000 km / h, used a thermal shield to avoid burning, then deployed a parachute 70 feet in diameter while still moving at twice the speed of sound. Finally, the craft used rocket propellers to slow down even more, then used a system known as a crane. Sky to reduce the final distance of the vehicle to the surface.

From there, the six-wheeled rover was lowered to the surface of Mars using cables, and the site of "Jizero Crater" on the planet's surface was chosen for the landing, because scientists believe that the area was once a submerged river delta.

Although the horrific stage of the rover's journey is over, it awaits a difficult task facing cliffs and craters, as "persistence" will fill soil samples into tubes that will be placed on the surface of Mars, so that another mission can fetch them.

The cameras and microphones associated with "perseverance" will allow researchers the opportunity to see and hear what is going on on the red planet while the vehicle is roaming. NASA will also try to pilot a small helicopter that was on the rover called " Ingenuity ", and thus this helicopter is the first vehicle built Man is flying on another planet.

The mission could help pave the way for humans to go to the red planet, NASA aims to conduct a technical demonstration of converting carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere into oxygen in the hope that it will provide support for one of the essentials of life for a person traveling to the planet in the future.

It should be noted that "perseverance" is the ninth robot belonging to NASA to land on Mars , and the third spacecraft to reach the planet this month, after the Hope probe from the United Arab Emirates and the Chinese spacecraft, Tianwen-1 .