NASA Just Dropped Trailer For Perseverance's Arrival On Mars And It's Pretty Intense

You probably heard about NASA’s Perseverance rover that was launched for Mars back in July this year. It will look for signs of ancient life and collect samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and soil) that could be returned and examined on Earth.

The countdown to landing on Mars has now begun with 56 days to go. And just in time for Christmas, NASA has dropped a trailer of Perseverance’s journey completion that is due to take place on February 11. After almost 300 million miles, the rover sets foot on the red planet in a minute-long video that honestly looks like a proper movie trailer.

Tune in for the intense animation that represents all the quintessential details of the historical landing; a roar hitting the atmosphere, a woosh of a parachute, heat shield deploying, and a static glitch that is enough to mean “we did it!”

More info: Mars.NASA.Gov

A key objective of Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, which means it will be looking for any possible signs of ancient microbial life. According to NASA’s statement, the rover will characterize the planet's geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

After landing, the Perseverance rover will begin its two-year mission which makes up one year in Mars time. Rebekah Sosland Siegfriedt, a NASA Systems Engineer who tested the rover before its launch back in July, previously commented on this historic mission.

"It's going to take a lot of effort and it's going to take a lot of equipment, and that's why the instrumentation on this rover is the way it is, so we can actually ensure that humans can survive on Mars for, you know, a longer period of time, maybe even years," she said.

There will also be a subsequent mission run along with the European Space Agency that will send a separate spacecraft to Mars which will collect the samples and return them to Earth.

But the Mars 2020 mission is just the tip of the iceberg that’s a program that also incorporates missions to the Moon. NASA announced that it will be sending the returning astronauts to the Moon 4 years from now, which will lead to a sustained human presence on and around the moon by the end of 2030. NASA’s anticipated lunar exploration program is known as “Artemis.”