How Perseverance Landed On Mars

As you probably know by now (especially if you're a regular reader of this blog), NASA's Perseverance rover successfully landed on Mars about three weeks ago. You may not know just what an incredible feat of engineering and science that landing was. 

Aerospace engineer Brian Kirby has published the best explanation of the landing that I've seen yet. It's long but interesting with lots of graphics and linked videos to help visualize what was going on during each phase of the landing. 

The world rightfully gawked at the engineering prowess of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as it successfully landed the car-sized rover named Perseverance on the surface of Mars. You might think that I, an engineer with experience working on a deep space mission, would be less impressed than most. But trust me: The spacecraft that landed Perseverance was an incredible Rube Goldberg Machine, and I’m going to explain exactly how incredible in this in-depth technical breakdown, which features testing footage, as well as NASA’s newly released video and pictures from the landing and its aftermath.

The Mars 2020 Mission has been hailed as one of the most accurate and complicated pieces of human exploration ever attempted. It traveled almost 300 million miles from Earth to hit a bullseye less than five miles in diameter on the surface of Mars.

I’ve spent hours poring over the technical details of this feat, and everywhere I look, it becomes more elegant, complex, and impressive. Let’s dig into why the team needed this level of landing precision, how the spacecraft got to Mars, and how the craft descended to the surface. Along the way, let’s look at the testing and technical teamwork needed to hit that bullseye while decelerating the rover from 12,000 mph at the top of the atmosphere to less than two mph at touchdown, all in less than seven minutes.

If you're a more visually oriented person, the PBS Nova documentary, Looking for Life on Mars: NASA Perseverance Rover Mission, is up on YouTube. It's one of the better Nova documentaries I've seen and covers both the history of the mission and the landing.