NASA has released new photos of its Perseverance Mars Rover taken just moments before its six wheels hit the ground, an astonishing glimpse into the fiendishly complex descent on its innovative Sky Crane. The Perseverance rover – complete with its Mars helicopter companion – touched down on the surface of Mars on Thursday afternoon, February 18, the culmination of millions of miles of travel and years of work by NASA and its partners.
The descent was all the more harrowing for that team because exactly how it went was completely out of NASA’s hands. At 147 million miles from Earth, Mars is well out of instantaneous communication distance. In fact, it takes more…