7 thoughts on “Perseverance”

  1. Fox News

    “Perseverance, the most technologically advanced robot NASA has sent to date, will remain on Mars for nearly two years, searching for signs of ancient life and exploring the red planet’s surface.”

    I haven’t follow the mission planning very closely, but where does it go next? Is it flying back to Earth or is it headed on to Jupiter?

    1. Would this be the same Fox News that reported on the aborted SLS test fire via a thumbnail video clip of an F9 nighttime launch?

      It was pretty close, though… if one can’t tell that day is not night, that static fires don’t launch, and that a Falcon 9 is not SLS.

  2. This lander will have, for the very first time, real microphones to record Martian sounds. There are two of them, and may be (though no official plan exists) used to record stereo sound.

    It’s so about damned time. Human awareness is primarily visual, and secondarily auditory. We have had only one microphone deliberately flown to another planet (Mars), on a failed lander attempt, before this. Then someone figured out how to use a seismic instrument to sort of hear something on a subsequent Mars lander.

    It has been most exasperating to me. I’d love to hear what another planet sounds like, and with Mars, there is at least some chance. Venus would be even better, and the gas giant planets and some of their moons best of all. The data rates for sound are trivial compared to virtually any other telemetry we get back. What has been the big problem?

    Maybe…just maybe…NASA has been afraid of hearing a ghostly whisper “Get out!”

    1. Just before Total Loss of Telemetry from Perseverance the following sounds were heard: Pew! Pew! Pew! and the shadow of Marvin the Martian™.

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