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Episode details

World Service,3 mins

Nasa’s Mars landing will be ‘seven minutes of terror’

Discovery

Available for over a year

Nasa’s Perseverance rover left Earth this year and should arrive at Mars in February 2021. The rover will land in a vast crater, which was filled with water in Mars’ early history. Perseverance will spend years surveying the geology of Jerezo crater and examine the rocks for any evidence that life existed in the ancient lake. Mission manager Keith Comeaux describes how the rover will make its descent onto the Red Planet. The scientists and engineers at Nasa call the journey, from the top of the Martian atmosphere to the ground, the ‘seven minutes of terror’. (Image: Perseverance rover, illustration, Credit: Nasa.)

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