APOD: 2021 February 16 - Perseverance: Seven Minutes to Mars

Thank you my friend Maj William W. 'Bill' Price for posting the NASA Astronomy Video Clip of the Day (AVCOD) is titled "Perseverance: Seven Minutes to Mars."

Image:
1. Artistic conception of NASA Perseverance Rover landing on Mars on February 18, 2021
2. NASA Perseverance Rover destined to land on Mars on February 18, 2021
3. Perseverance Mars Rover Instrument Label - destined to land on mars on February 18, 2021

AVCOD Background
"Explanation: How hard is it to land safely on Mars? So hard that many more attempts have failed than succeeded. The next attempt will be on Thursday. The main problem is that the Martian atmosphere is too thick to ignore -- or it will melt your spacecraft. On the other hand, the atmosphere is too thin to rely on parachutes -- or your spacecraft will crash land. Therefore, as outlined in the featured video, the Perseverance lander will lose much of its high speed by deploying a huge parachute, but then switch to rockets, and finally, assuming everything goes right, culminate with a hovering Sky Crane that will slowly lower the car-sized Perseverance rover to the surface with ropes. It may sound crazy, but the Curiosity rover was placed on Mars using a similar method in 2012. From atmospheric entry to surface touch-down takes about seven minutes, all coordinated by an onboard computer because Mars is too far away for rapid interactive communication. During this time, humans on Earth will simply wait to hear if the landing was successful. Last week, UAE's Hope spacecraft successfully began orbiting Mars, followed a day later by the Chinese Tianwen-1 mission, which will likely schedule a landing of its own rover sometime in the next few months."

“Perseverance” performed by Tommy Walker Ministries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mokp3qy9Dw

FYI Maj Robert Thornton Lt Col Charlie Brown COL Mikel J. Burroughs Sgt (Join to see) PO1 William "Chip" Nagel Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen SGT Denny Espinosa Sgt Vance Bonds MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. TSgt David L. SPC Nancy GreenePO2 (Join to see) SSG Michael NollMaj Marty Hogan SMSgt David A Asbury SMSgt Lawrence McCarter SSG Stephen RogersonCPT Richard Trione

Good stuff. Looking forward to the reports from the landing. Hope all goes well

It is fascinating to learn and discuss Mars missions; to propel our minds and theoretic knowledge into space, of which we have a limited amount of intellect. We are gaining relatively a better understanding of Space; The Final Frontier. We know about planets, galaxies and even black holes; however, is this the extent of Space? Not at all.

This share is much-appreciated BP Sir.