Perseverance and Ingenuity

NASA'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.

Strapped to the rover's belly for the journey to Mars is the Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity. On April 19, 2021 NASA and the JPL achieved a Wright Brothers moment by testing the first powered flight on another planet!

Perseverance will continue its search for signs of ancient microbial life, which advances NASA's quest to explore the past habitability of Mars. The rover has a drill to collect core samples of Martian rock and soil, and then store them in sealed tubes for pickup by a future mission that would ferry them back to Earth for detailed analysis.

Visit NASA’s Perseverance website for more spectacular video footage of Perseverance’s landing on Mars, High Definition (HD) panoramic images, and, incredibly, recorded audio from the surface of the red planet itself.

Check out this recent Readers’ Place post on fiction and nonfiction Martian titles!