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YouTube Gold: Perseverance Gets Down To Business

Some spectacular imagery is already arriving from Mars

By JD King
NASA Perseverance Rover Lands On Mars
 In this concept illustration provided by NASA, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter stands on the Red Planet’s surface as NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover (partially visible on the left) rolls away. NASA’s Perseverance (Mars 2020) rover will store rock and soil samples in sealed tubes on the planet’s surface for future missions to retrieve in the area known as Jezero crater on the planet Mars. A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, paving the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
Photo illustration by NASA via Getty Images

It’s kind of hard to realize it, but really, the space race is still in its infancy. The US has been to the moon several times, but not for quite a long time and no one else has visited yet. Probes have landed on asteroids and comets, and of course, Mars.

Significant photography of Mars started in 1965 when Mariner 4 flew by and sent back low resolution photos.

As photography and bandwidth improved, we began to get a much better idea of what Mars was like, including this photo which startled people on earth before scientists showed that it was an illusion.

But as time went on, the photos became crystal clear and when NASA landed Perseverance on the Red Planet this month, it did so with cutting edge equipment, including a mini helicopter that will soon go up to scan things the rover can’t see from the ground.

But it’s already sending back tremendous images including this panoramic view of the landing site, Jezero Crater.

Elon Musk, as you probably know, is planning to take people to Mars as soon as possible. It’s a daunting, daring idea. Can he pull it off? Will see humans on Mars in a few years?

It seems impossible but not too long ago, just seeing Mars like this would have been crazy too. This...this seems tangible, a place you could actually be.

Granted, getting Bojangles would be a problem but it might be worth it.

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