As NASA’s Perseverance rover reaches Mars on Thursday, the final leg of its journey, known as the “seven minutes of terror,” will commence.
As scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab explain in the video above, the lander’s journey from the top of the Martian atmosphere to the planet’s surface is a precise, seven-minute sequence. And once it begins, scientists on Earth have no control over it. It takes 14 minutes to get data back to Earth from Mars, so everyone back home must wait seven agonizing minutes to know if the rover’s made it through its harrowing, high-speed entry and descent into its hopefully soft landing. While Perseverance’s entry, descent, and landing sequence borrows a lot from the Curiosity rover, it has some added navigational tech to help scan the terrain below and make a more precise and informed landing in the final stage.
When the Perseverance lander gets through the atmosphere, it will be traveling at about 1,000 miles per hour, at which point it will deploy a massive supersonic parachute to slow itself down, then drop its protective heat shield, which protects the rover from scorching temperatures of about 2,370 degrees Fahrenheit. From there, it will examine the terrain below before releasing its parachute and making a controlled, rocket-powered descent to about 20 meters above the surface. The lander lowers the rover down on wires the rest of the way.
Any of that going wrong could spell disaster for Perseverance. If it all goes right, though, Perseverance can begin exploring the Jezero Crater. Seven minutes of terror will tell.
