Perseverance rover’s descent and touchdown on Mars [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Perseverance rover’s descent and touchdown on Mars [video]

#21

Post by NikolaeVarius » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 8:46 PM UTC

aphextron wrote: post #10

As incredible as this footage is, it's even more mindblowing to realize we've been doing this for 50 years now. We know how to land on mars. Time to do it with people.

This method has been used twice, it is nowhere near human rated, hence why its called the 7 minutes of terror. For all the engineering, it has to be perfect or splat

Re: Perseverance rover’s descent and touchdown on Mars [video]

#22

Post by ZuLuuuuuu » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 8:47 PM UTC

This is incredibly impressive. I can't imagine the complexity and the effort it took to make the sky crane maneuver at the end possible.

Re: Perseverance rover’s descent and touchdown on Mars [video]

#23

Post by rtkwe » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 8:48 PM UTC

somedude895 wrote: post #4

This is incredible quality. What's the file size of the video and what path did the data take?

It got sent back via orbiters ranging from the ESA's Trace Gas orbiter, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter or Mars Odyssey. Through those they can get up to 2 megabits per second [0] back to earth but that depends a lot on the orbiter it's talking to at a given time. The TGO is doing a lot and is one of the early high speed relays for the data from Perseverance. [1] There's also direct links to and from Earth but they're significantly slower.

[0] https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/communicatio...

[1] https://scitechdaily.com/nasas-mars-2020-perseverance-rover-...

Re: Perseverance rover’s descent and touchdown on Mars [video]

#24

Post by udev » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 8:53 PM UTC

There is this emotion, not sure it has a name, which I am sure many engineers know -- when you prepare your system for a long time and then send it into the real world and watch it work...

You can feel it in this video, e.g when you see the crane fly away after accomplishing the mission.

If we don't have a name for this emotion yet, I hope the japanese or the germans invent one. :)

Re: Perseverance rover’s descent and touchdown on Mars [video]

#25

Post by rx_tx » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 8:56 PM UTC

One of the engineers said that the parachute's patterns was both for visually determining the orientation (with computer vision), but also hinted there was some secret message in it. (at 19:34 in the livestream)

Re: Perseverance rover’s descent and touchdown on Mars [video]

#26

Post by XVII » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 8:59 PM UTC

udev wrote: post #24

There is this emotion, not sure it has a name, which I am sure many engineers know -- when you prepare your system for a long time and then send it into the real world and watch it work... You can feel it in this video, e.g when you see the crane fly away after accomplishing the mission. If we don't have a name for this emotion yet, I hope the japanese or the germans invent one. :)

I'll just invent one: 'Funktionsfähigkeitsdemonstrationseuphorie'

Re: Perseverance rover’s descent and touchdown on Mars [video]

#27

Post by yread » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 9:00 PM UTC

rtkwe wrote: post #18

aphextron wrote: post #10

As incredible as this footage is, it's even more mindblowing to realize we've been doing this for 50 years now. We know how to land on mars. Time to do it with people.

We know how to land relatively small things on Mars landing humans will be a much larger craft and because of that a harder task.

But you don't have to worry that much about kicking up a lot of dust (the self-loading meatbags on board can clean your solar panels) so you can just point your thrusters at the ground and play with the throttle a little

Re: Perseverance rover’s descent and touchdown on Mars [video]

#28

Post by interestica » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 9:06 PM UTC

jvanderbot wrote: post #6

somedude895 wrote: post #4

This is incredible quality. What's the file size of the video and what path did the data take?

The briefing said they had downloaded ~20 GB of data over the last few days. I'm sure much of that was _not_ EDL data.

30 GB of data and 23000 images. Crazy. https://youtu.be/gYQwuYZbA6o?t=562

Re: Perseverance rover’s descent and touchdown on Mars [video]

#29

Post by krm01 » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 9:07 PM UTC

O5vYtytb wrote: post #5

I don't know why I'm surprised at the amount of footage and the quality, but I am. This is really setting a new bar for missions like this, similar to what SpaceX has done in recent years. Stuff like this has got to be huge for getting interest and excitement from the general public and especially kids.

It would be great to see some startups work on interplanetary video streaming tech. If you're building an other video streaming service, stop what your doing, and give this a try. I know I know. Very, very hard to solve and all, and this is totally a fanboy speaking, but it would have been awesome if we could have seen this footage in (as close as possible to) real-time when the landing happened.

Re: Perseverance rover’s descent and touchdown on Mars [video]

#30

Post by baggy_trough » Mon, Feb 22, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

netcraft wrote: post #7

So glad they've realized the value in allowing everyone to experience how hard these things are. So impressive, I can't wait to watch this video over and over. The inflation of the parachute is spectacular, and knowing how hard it is, and how hard it is to test on earth - its just incredible. And the skycrane was flawless - just so impressive how well it works. Too bad it flies off to crash and can't land gently some…

If there was mass available to add something to the sky crane, you'd be better off putting that thing on the rover, since the rover has the plutonium power pack.

I do feel a bit sorry for the crane as well though :)