Perseverance Landing on Mars: Descent Call-Outs and Real Footage

NASA's Perseverance rover went from 440 m/s under its parachute to a confirmed touchdown in Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021, and the mission's official video shows it with real footage and the original mission control call-outs. The footage comes from several cameras in the rover's entry, descent and landing suite: one on the descent stage looking down, one on the rover looking up at the descent stage, one on top of the aeroshell looking up at the parachute, and one on the bottom of the rover looking down at the surface.

Parachute and heat shield

The sequence begins with the "straighten up and fly right" maneuver, in which the spacecraft jettisons its entry balance masses ahead of parachute deploy and rolls over to give the radar a better look at the ground. After the parachute deployed, controllers reported significant deceleration, with velocity at 440 m/s at an altitude of about 12 km. Perseverance then slowed to subsonic speeds and the heat shield separated, letting the radar and cameras get their first look at the surface. Velocity was 145 m/s at about 9.5 km.

Radar lock and navigation

The navigation filter converged and the rover had radar lock on the ground at about 100 m/s and 6.6 km above the surface. At about 90 m/s and 4.2 km, terrain relative navigation was about to be initialized, followed by priming of the landing engines. Controllers confirmed that the lander vision system had produced a valid solution, and the landing engines were primed.

Back shell and sky crane

The back shell separated at about 83 m/s and 2.6 km. The divert maneuver followed, at about 75 m/s and roughly a kilometer above the surface. Terrain relative navigation was completed at about 30 m/s and 300 meters. The constant velocity phase then led into the sky crane maneuver, which started about 20 m off the surface. Signals were received via MRO, and touchdown was confirmed with Perseverance safely on the surface of Mars.