Posted on 02/20/2021 3:31:45 PM PST by MtnClimber
Explanation: Slung beneath its rocket powered descent stage Perseverance hangs only a few meters above the martian surface, captured here moments before its February 18 touchdown on the Red Planet. The breath-taking view followed an intense seven minute trip from the top of the martian atmosphere. Part of a high resolution video, the picture was taken from the descent stage itself during the final skycrane landing maneuver. Three taut mechanical cables about 7 meters long are visible lowering Perseverance, along with an electrical umbilical connection feeding signals (like this image), to a computer on board the car-sized rover. Below Perseverance streamers of martian dust are kicked-up from the surface by the descent rocket engines. Immediately after touchdown, the cables were released allowing the descent stage to fly to a safe distance before exhausting its fuel as planned.
It’s a tendency to lean for those who have no feet.
You may be surprised to know that here in a rural corner of England, the middle of Devon, we have some local pride about our small contribution to this. The fabric for the parachute was developed, and the parachute canopy itself made, by Heathcoats, a factory in our nearby town. This was a traditional English woollen mill, dating from the early years of the Industrial Revolution. Rather than disappearing without trace, as did most of its kind, when cheap fabrics from the East began to flood the market from the 1970s, it reinvented itself as a developer and producer of hi-tec fabrics for low-volume specialist applications such as this.
It also developed and made the fabrics for the previous NASA Mars landers.
Well they certainly did a great job with that parachute! That parachute had to open at very high velocity. The Rover experienced a 9g shock when the parachute opened and the parachute held together through it all.
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