Hey, all. So we're roughly 21 days (Earth, not Mars! ) from touchdown right now, and NASA has released a schedule of planned arrival coverage (link below). Their first look-ahead briefing is tomorrow. This thread will serve as a place to post resources for landing coverage, esp. given that some of our international members may be interested in local and/or language-specific options for same. If you happen know of any of those please post links here.

As per UMSF custom, there will be a dedicated landing thread opened for the big event when we get close. Remember to have your snacks & beverages of choice ready, and peanuts are optional but encouraged!

NASA Perseverance Arrival Coverage (Scheduled)

The Eyes on the Solar System team have still got a few tweaks to make - but their EDL experience is up and live. Unlike with MSL when you had to download and install it - it's now a WebGL thing...... https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/mars2020/

Ridiculously cool. Thanks, Doug!!!

Error !

Hello,

Thank you for this invitation to promote "local" events to follow the landing of Perseverance.

Pour les francophones, il y a par exemple une émission produite par le CNES (Centre National des Etudes Spatiales) :

https://supercam.cnes.fr/fr/capsurmars-atte...ge-perseverance

Une conférence organisée en numérique à la Cité des Sciences à Paris :

http://www.cite-sciences.fr/fr/au-programm...c-perseverance/

Gotta have those peanuts! Those things have mostly been a good luck charm for American Mars landings.

The Perseverance Landing Press Kit has been posted here.

The Curiosity/MSL landing press kit was outstanding, full of detailed discussions, but not as challenging as a scientific paper. It was my mainstay until Emily Lakdawalla's book came out.

This press kit at first glance seems sketchier, but that might be my late-middle-aged grumpiness talking. And of course, JPL knows better than I do the needs of its target audience.

Edit: fixed link to the MSL landing press kit

The NASA EYES EDL sim is just brilliant.

My only crit is the funky displacement in the form of very many massive mounds ( obviously not present at Jezero ) that stream in as we come in for landing, which obfuscate the landing itself.

What an incredible thing it is to fling a robot at another planet and have the audacity to land safely on it!



edit: Just read Doug's post on the tweaks to be made. I have no doubt it will look just grea!

I just retired on December 1st. I know how I'm going to spend all my free time on landing day!

Per Mike's suggestion posts concerning penetrator probes/smart balance masses have been moved to a new topic.

Yeah - I'm not getting that. What browser are you on, I'll let the team know.

Traditions, traditions.

For Spirit and Oppy's arrival, I bought a brand new computer and screen.
For Curiosity's arrival, I bought a brand new computer and a bigger screen.
I write today on a new computer with a huge screen! Many thanks to JPL for the great adventures over the years, and for providing me with the opportunity once per decade to negociate with a higher authority * the purchase of new electronic equipment.

I've got two kilos of Mars bars at the ready and a jar of peanuts (for the immediate apéro after safe landing) and I let my fingernails grow since last christmas to nibble on during the next seven minutes of terror.
I guess I'm about all set!

Go Perseverance, safe journey and safe landing!

* My wife

A useful blog post by Emily Lakdawalla @elakdawalla: "How Do I Watch the Perseverance Landing?"

https://www.patreon.com/posts/47214292

Will this event be implemented in the actual NASA's Eyes software before the landing date though ? On my version, Mars 2020 still "lands" on Mars in one piece.

Regular ‘Eyes’ is being phased out. It’s >10 years old and in a world of smartphones, tablets and chrome books....increasingly unusable for a majority of people. The WebGL experience is where to go for EDL. The full ‘Eyes...’ experience will eventually all be in WebGL. I doubt they’ll have the resources to transfer EDL back to the old platform.

Ive not been with the Eyes team for over half a decade, and we had started trying to get off the dependence on Unity for a while even then. That MSL EDL was a very ugly hack in original “Eyes” and maintaining it has been a nightmare.

Just checked again and displacement is still funky

Browser is Brave V1.20.103 (Feb 10, 2021) on PC / Windows 10

Chrome & Firefox are fine.

Yeah - I think Brave has a pretty wide swathe of WebGL issues. I'll fwd this onto the team but I doubt there's much they can do.

Earlier today JPL held a press conference devoted to an Engineering and Tech Overview, which is already available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-M1Jb7FlSg&t=23s

It was good to hear from Jennifer Trosper, who I remember well from the initial period of frequent press conferences after the MER landings.

Emily Lakdawalla tweeted some commentary with links to other resources here: https://twitter.com/elakdawalla/status/1361737533936164864


Today’s briefing is a welcome supplement to the earlier L-30  briefing, which is can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70rKVFNtV7c

Emily Lakdawalla just tweeted that she will be covering the landing live on YouTube. https://twitter.com/elakdawalla/status/1361796567385055234


Additional resource links are in the twitter thread linked above.

The YouTube link for the landing is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woab2wX5Db4

I'm looking forward to this!

Today’s press briefing included an interesting exchange about the way the Terrain-Relative Navigation system works.

The excellent Irish reporter Leo Enright, a veteran of many Mars landing press conferences, repeated a question he'd asked at a prior briefing. He has been trying to find out how much "hover time is available to the skycrane," based on the available fuel, if the TRN system made the maximum possible alteration to the spacecraft's descent trajectory, which he had apparently been told would be the horizontal equivalent of "120 football fields."

Allen Chen responded that the notion of hover time was a misconception about the way the system works, because in fact the descent stage is always plummeting towards the surface and never hovers, except at the instant between the rover's touchdown and release of the cables. He said that the system can divert the landing point by as much as 700 meters, that the required maneuver would take place immediately after backshell separation, and that a maximum diversion would add no more than 3-4 seconds to the descent time and consume about 20 kg additional fuel.

The discussion takes place at ~52.30 in the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO6__cLGkYw

I saw that exchange too, I think what what is meant is the map is 120 football fields wide, but the TRN will land on the nearest safe spot, unless the entry is way off they won't be diverting 120 football fields or even 700 meters.

"Perseverance- Mars 2020 Rover
Launching July 2020 "
That is one outdated category description

NASA live coverage just began, and EDL thread now live here.

GO PERSEVERANCE!!!!

Yeap. Go girl !!!

What would be the best option fo a technical stream without any talking heads? Just straight video from mission control with comms would be ideal.

From https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive [all times EST]
Feb. 18, Thursday
12:30 p.m.—Perseverance Mars Rover landing day livestream for all students
2:15 p.m.—NASA will provide multiple feeds of live landing coverage of the Perseverance Mars Rover, leading up to the rover's landing at approximately 3:55 p.m. EST.

• NASA TV coverage, with mission commentary, will be available on this page
• A "clean" feed of views inside mission control and mission audio only, will be available on NASA TV's media channel and the JPLraw YouTube Channel
• A 360-degree view inside mission control will be available on JPL's YouTube channel
• 2:30 p.m.—"Juntos Perseveramos": live Spanish-language landing commentary on NASA en Español’s YouTube channel.

5:30 p.m. (no earlier than)—Perseverance Mars Rover post-landing coverage

Where can I find a tracker that tells me (to at least the nearest 100 km) the distance between Perseverance and Mars? The website I was following seems to have removed it sometime in the last hour.

Go Perseverance! We are millions behind you!

Reminder: Let's move the discussion to the EDL thread.

Will the post-landing press conference come up soon? - Am watching on https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/#media but not sure if it will show there...

From the "Perseverance Lands In Jezero Crater, Sol 0-" Thread:

Still waiting for it to start.

Starting now!

Next news conference I understand at 1800UTC on Friday Feb 19.

Following one at 1900UTC on Monday Feb 22.