Curiosity landed in a similar way. There was the aerobraking, parachute, heat shield and backshell separation, powered descent, and skycrane maneuver. What Curiosity didn’t have was (1) the range trigger and (2) the terrain-relative navigation.
Another main difference in landing is in where each rover lands. Comparing the landing ellipses, which is where the rover is intended to land (within the ellipse), Curiosity’s was 20x20km (12x12mi) and Perseverance’s will be about 8x7km (5x4mi). Comparatively tiny. Curiosity was landing near rolling hills; Perseverance is landing right next to a big pointy crater that will eff you up if you touch it.
I remember being profoundly relieved when Curiosity made its landing precisely because it seemed like a somewhat lunatic procedure full of potential failure points (not, mind you, that I have some better way to land a very heavy but fairly delicate piece of equipment on Mars!). Hope all goes well with Perseverence as well - I won’t be able to make the event (it overlaps a class I’m teaching) but it’s awesome that something like this is being organized.
So we know when the Zoom party starts. Do we know approximately when the landing is supposed to occur? I’ll put it on for my class to watch if I can get down to approximately 10 minutes. We can’t spend all afternoon waiting for it to happen.
I’m definitely going to try and join! Bit confused about the EST though: I’m pretty sure the time difference between the US and Europe is more than 3 hours?
Yup, to add to that the 3 hour time difference is between the west coast and east coasts of USA. It’s only just now 8am for me.
Hawaii and Alaska ever further offset. It’s 6am in aloha time. There’s a 5 hour difference between the east coast and GMT. And a 10 hour difference for our island fans.
Yeah, I just automatically assumed it was European Standard Time. Self-centred? Hell no! ;-)
Anyway, that would set the European Standard Time of the landing/Zoom party at around 7.15 PM. Not ideal, but not impossible either. I’ll see what I can do!
For those of you with kids, you may want to reach out to teachers with some resources.
The education office put together a Mars Challenge for the Perseverance rover landing. There are all sorts of resources and activities in the weeks preceding the landing, but you can also scroll down, click on Week 5, Click to Expand, and select the grade level (in my case, 6-8). There are 3 short videos and several lessons for inspiration, though I recognize it’s a little late to be replanning the week. The education office also published a Teachable Moment earlier this year which may be helpful.
In addition to the NASA/JPL feed of the landing, Discovery Education will be simulcasting the landing with a delay and no commentary. It may be free but you have to register. Don’t know why you would do that.
I’m a college professor so take this with a grain of salt, but I suspect K-12 teachers are ripping their hair out trying to fit what they can into the limited in-class time available and yeah, all the fun stuff inevitably has to be jettisoned when that happens. It sucks, but at the end of the day you’ve got to hit your core requirements or face serious trouble from on high.
That said I really wish I was teaching astronomy this semester because this would be a LOT of fun to cover.
