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Mars Rover Landing Coming, Here's How to Enjoy It All

It’s not long now until the most ambitious human mission to the Red Planet arrives there. The Perseverance rover is on course and well on track of making a perfect landing in the Jezero Crater in February 2021, and NASA is planning to make a spectacle of it.
Less than two months left until Perseverance lands on Mars 1 photo
Photo: NASA
Because a lot of its efforts are now being targeted at pleasing civilians and giving them a feeling of participation in all things extra-terrestrial, NASA released this week what it calls the Landing Toolkit for the mission. It comprises pretty much everything one needs for the experience of watching the landing and making it a memorable one, from posters to challenges.

The comprehensive coverage of the Perseverance rover includes everything from the Interactive Virtual Launch Packet, a 3D model of the rover, stickers, posters, and much more. You can find them all by accessing this link.

Aside from this resources package, NASA wants people to be a part of all this, so it set up a watch online guide for the landing, complete with the calendar of upcoming events.

Perseverance is scheduled to land on Mars on February 18, with the broadcast from Mission Control expected to start at 11:15 a.m. PST/2:15 p.m. EST. Following that moment, we are promised daily news and images from Mars on a specially created website.

Perseverance is based on the same platform as the Curiosity rover. Developed by JPL’s Mars Science Laboratory, it is about the size of a car and packs a wealth of instruments for the exploration of the neighboring planet.

As the first of its kind to target long-term goals, the rover will look for signs of life, track natural resources and hazards, assess the habitability of the environment, and even try to generate oxygen in what is the first attempt humans have ever made at terraforming another planet.

It will also pick-up and store rock samples in canisters placed in strategic areas, for a future mission to pick them up and bring them to Earth.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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