Filed under
landing
6 milestones, in chronological order.
- 4 July 1997The Rover Decades
Pathfinder bounces onto Mars and lets Sojourner out
Airbags took the shock: the lander rebounded twelve metres, bounced at least fifteen more times across Ares Vallis, then opened to release Sojourner, 10.6 kg of rover.
- January 2004The Rover Decades
Spirit and Opportunity find the chemistry of water
Built for 90 sols apiece, Spirit lasted six years and Opportunity fourteen. Within eight weeks Opportunity had jarosite and hematite spherules: rock soaked in acidic water.
- 25 May 2008The Rover Decades
Phoenix digs five centimetres and touches ice
Phoenix landed on rockets at 68 degrees north and scraped down to white material. It vanished in four sols — ice, not salt — and in September the lidar watched snow fall.
- 6 August 2012Follow the Water
Curiosity survives the seven minutes of terror
A rocket-powered crane lowered an 899-kilogram rover onto the floor of Gale Crater on cables. The system had never been flown, and it worked first time.
- 21 December 2015Follow the Water
A Falcon 9 first stage flies back and lands upright
Less than ten minutes after lifting off with 11 satellites, a Falcon 9 first stage flew back to Cape Canaveral and landed upright, the first stage from an orbital launch to do so.
- 18 February 2021The Present Push
Perseverance lands in Jezero, and we watch it happen
Five off-the-shelf cameras filmed the parachute opening and the sky crane lowering a one-tonne rover into a dry river delta. The descent microphone recorded nothing usable.