They used to call it “Seven Minutes of Terror”—a NASA probe would slice into the atmosphere of Mars at more than 20,000 kilometers per hour; slow itself with a heat shield, parachute, and rocket engines; and somehow land intact on the surface, just six or seven minutes later, while its makers waited helplessly on Earth. The computer-animated landing […]
Tucked under the belly of the Perseverance rover that will be landing on Mars in just a few days is a little helicopter called Ingenuity. Its body is the size of a box of tissues, slung underneath a pair of 1.2m carbon fiber rotors on top of four spindly legs. It weighs just 1.8kg, but […]
If you could stand next to NASA’s Perseverance rover on the Martian surface… well, you’d be standing on Mars. Which would be a pretty remarkable thing unto itself. But if you were waiting for the rover to go boldly exploring, your mind might soon wander. You’d be forgiven for thinking this is like watching paint dry. The Curiosity rover, which landed […]