{"id":17592,"date":"2021-02-22T22:05:26","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T14:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nasa-releases-jaw-dropping-video-and-audio-from-mars-with-an-assist-from-aws\/"},"modified":"2021-02-22T22:05:26","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T14:05:26","slug":"nasa-releases-jaw-dropping-video-and-audio-from-mars-with-an-assist-from-aws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nasa-releases-jaw-dropping-video-and-audio-from-mars-with-an-assist-from-aws\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA releases jaw-dropping video and audio from Mars, with an assist from AWS"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_605668\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-605668\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-605668\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/210222-panorama3-630x423.jpg\" alt=\"Mars Perseverance panorama\" width=\"630\" height=\"423\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/210222-panorama3-630x423.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/210222-panorama3-768x516.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/210222-panorama3.jpg 1190w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-605668\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A portion of a panorama from NASA\u2019s Perseverance rover shows its surroundings in Mars\u2019 Jezero Crater. The close-range perspective is somewhat skewed due to the panorama effect. (NASA \/ JPL-Caltech)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>For the first time ever, NASA has captured video of a rover landing on the surface of Mars, plus audio of the wind whistling past it after the landing \u2014 and Amazon Web Services is playing a key role in making all those gigabytes of goodness available to the world.<\/p>\n<p>The stars of the show are NASA\u2019s Perseverance rover and the hundreds of scientists and engineers supporting the mission to Mars at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and other institutions around the world. But the fact that thousands of images are being pumped out via NASA\u2019s website with only a few hiccups is arguably a testament to AWS\u2019 performance.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAWS is proud to support NASA JPL\u2019s Perseverance mission,\u201d Teresa Carlson, Amazon Web Services\u2019 vice president of worldwide public sector and industries, said today in a blog post. \u201cFrom the outset, AWS cloud services have enabled NASA JPL in its mission to capture and share mission-critical images, and help to answer key questions about the potential for life on Mars.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>More than 23,000 images, amounting to 30 gigabytes of data, were gathered during the final minutes of Perseverance\u2019s journey to Jezero Crater on Mars, said Dave Gruel, camera suite lead for entry, descent and landing at JPL.<\/p>\n<p>A couple of cameras looked up from the spacecraft\u2019s back shell to document the deployment of the parachute. Another camera looked down from the \u201cSky Crane\u201d descent stage to watch the rover\u2019s touchdown. Meanwhile, cameras on the rover looked up at the Sky Crane and looked down and out to survey its surroundings.<\/p>\n<p>All those perspectives were put together in a three-minute video that documented the milestones of the descent, from the time the parachute popped open to the rover\u2019s dusty touchdown. At the end, video from the rover shows the descent stage flying away to its safe disposal, powered by a set of thrusters built by Aerojet Rocketdyne in Redmond, Wash.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Perseverance Rover\u2019s Descent and Touchdown on Mars (Official NASA Video)\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4czjS9h4Fpg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt gives me goosebumps every time I see it,\u201d Gruel said at today\u2019s news briefing, conducted under COVID-19 conditions at JPL in Pasadena, Calif. \u201cI hope everybody kept their hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times while it was in motion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s not all: A modified off-the-shelf microphone was hooked up to the rover, with the intention of recording the sounds of the air whistling past during the descent.<\/p>\n<p>No sounds were recorded as the rover dropped, but once Perseverance had settled on its landing spot, the microphone captured the rumble of Martian wind gusts.<\/p>\n<p>Gruel said the characteristics of the sounds suggest that the gusts were blowing at about 11 mph (5 meters per second).<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Hear the Martian wind! Perseverance rover's first sounds captured\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qtNeZ0u3onw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>As the mission proceeds, the microphone could capture the crunch of rocks beneath the rover\u2019s wheels as they roll, deputy project manager Matt Wallace said.<\/p>\n<p>Both the video and the audio broke new ground for NASA: Although there\u2019s been descent imagery from past space odysseys, including the Apollo moon missions and the Mars Curiosity rover mission, this was the first time a robotic video camera clearly captured the moment of touchdown on another planet.<\/p>\n<p>As for the audio recordings, Soviet landers recorded sounds on the surface of Venus, the European Space Agency captured sound samples during the Huygens lander\u2019s descent to the surface of Titan, and NASA\u2019s Mars InSight lander documented wind vibrations using an air pressure sensor. But Perseverance is the first to pick up the sounds of Martian winds directly with a microphone.<\/p>\n<p>Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA\u2019s associate administrator for space science, said this is \u201chow it feels to make history.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"NASA\u2019S Perseverance Rover\u2019s First 360 View of Mars (Official)\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wE-aQO9XD1g?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe video of Perseverance\u2019s descent and landing, and the amazing panorama and the first wide landscape shot of Jezero Crater seen with human eyes, and the first Martian sounds are the closest you can get to landing on Mars without putting on a pressure suit,\u201d Zurbuchen said.<\/p>\n<p>Releasing the raw images, video and the sounds should fire up the imagination \u2014 not only for future space missions, but for creative crowdsourcing here on Earth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPlease go take a look at these data and play with them, especially those of you \u2026 that have signed up for our educational campaign,\u201d Zurbuchen said.&nbsp; \u201cWhat can you find in these pictures? And who\u2019s going to compose the first piece of music with actual Mars sound?\u201d (Does this count?)<\/p>\n<p>During the first couple of days of the mission, there was a fair amount of grumbling about the paucity of pictures released by the Perseverance team. But the situation changed dramatically today: The tally of raw images in NASA\u2019s Perseverance gallery jumped from less than 200 to more than 4,600 over the course of just a few hours.<\/p>\n<p>Amazon Web Services said NASA is using its cloud computing platform to process image data from Mars, and to power NASA\u2019s Mars mission website. \u201cThe website will be able to scale up to meet demand at any given time, with millions of visitors expected at peak times,\u201d AWS said.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_605670\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-605670\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-605670\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/210222-deck-630x473.jpg\" alt=\"Rover's instrument deck\" width=\"630\" height=\"473\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/210222-deck-630x473.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/210222-deck-1260x945.jpg 1260w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/210222-deck-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/210222-deck.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-605670\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The navigation cameras on NASA\u2019s Perseverance rover captured this view of the rover\u2019s deck on Feb. 20. This view provides a good look at the PIXL instrument on the rover\u2019s stowed robotic arm. (NASA \/ JPL-Caltech)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The plutonium-powered Perseverance probe is only four days into a mission that\u2019s expected to last at least two Earth years, and most likely much longer. The $2.7 billion mission\u2019s primary goal is to identify and store up samples that could hold evidence of past life on Mars. NASA plans to bring such samples back to Earth in about a decade for detailed lab study.<\/p>\n<p>Leaders of Perseverance\u2019s science team say they\u2019re already seeing intriguing geological features to dig into, including an assortment of \u201choley\u201d rocks that could be volcanic in origin.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf they are volcanic rocks, that is enormously important to us, because it potentially provides an opportunity to get a really nice radiometric age, or an absolute date, if a sample like that comes back to Earth,\u201d deputy project scientist Ken Williford said.<\/p>\n<p><em>For an extended-play version of this report, including additional images from the Perseverance rover and NASA\u2019s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, check out Alan Boyle\u2019s Cosmic Log.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A portion of a panorama from NASA\u2019s Perseverance rover shows its surroundings in Mars\u2019 Jezero Crater. The close-range perspective is somewhat skewed due to the panorama effect. (NASA \/ JPL-Caltech) For the first time ever, NASA has captured video of a rover landing on the surface of Mars, plus audio of the wind whistling past [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4704,4455,4526,367,190,4669,4706],"class_list":["post-17592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-2020-mars-rover","tag-amazon-web-services","tag-aws","tag-mars","tag-nasa","tag-nasa-jpl","tag-perseverance-rover"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17592"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}