Onboard Video of the Perseverance Rover Landing is the Most Incredible Thing I've Ever Seen

At a press conference this afternoon, NASA released a new video showing, in real-time and full color, the entire descent and landing of the Perseverance Mars rover. The video begins with the deployment of the parachute, and ends with the Skycrane cutting the rover free and flying away. It's the most mind-blowing three minutes of video I have ever seen.

Image: NASA/JPL The cameras that recorded video during the Mars 2020 rover's landing on Mars.

Some very quick context: during landing, multiple cameras were recording the event, and this video is a combination of these. No audio was recorded, so you're hearing a feed from JPL mission control.

Here's the video:

We'll have a lot more on the Perseverance rover, but for now, we're just going to let this video sink in.

[ Mars 2020 ]