r/spaceporn • u/superblobby • Feb 18 '21
The first Image from the Perseverance Rover NASA
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u/emoMcstabbstabb Feb 18 '21
Flat earthers now have a new platform to debunk.
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u/Suckage Feb 18 '21
The Earth is flat. That’s Mars, dummy.
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u/spotmanx Feb 18 '21
If it is Mars, why isn't red? Checkmate
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u/WayneSchlegel Feb 18 '21
Because we took it back from the Commies?
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Feb 19 '21
That reminds me of Tim Curry being a communist for a game and saying"I will go to the last place corrupted by capitalism....SPACE!"
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u/golgol12 Feb 18 '21
Nope. Obviously this is a set in Hollywood.
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u/superblobby Feb 18 '21
they built a soundstage on mars to simulate the gravity so it'd be easier to stage
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u/manwithfacts Feb 19 '21
Honestly can’t believe people believe the earth is flat. I can literally debunk that theory within a matter of seconds.
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u/superblobby Feb 18 '21
Don’t pay them any mind. Flat earthers like to suspend their disbelief so somehow we’ll all become a part of ‘big science’
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u/BingoFarmhouse Feb 19 '21
my Trumper relatives were posting to facebook about this being fake within moments.
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u/Andygoesred Feb 19 '21
Pretty easy to prove that this is all fake. Just look at how round that lens is to make it bend the edge of Mars and trick you into thinking it's round!
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u/yungsinatra0 Feb 18 '21
history being made right in front of our eyes..
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u/A_Very_Frail_Guy Feb 18 '21
It’ll be incredible to find previous life on another planet and hopefully in my lifetime will have people landing on Mars
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u/TheManFromFarAway Feb 18 '21
Imagine if in the near future they find fossils on Mars, and paleontologists are among some of the first explorers sent to the Red Planet. Cosmopaleontology would be a wild new field of study!
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u/thefuckingrougarou Feb 19 '21
Imagine if the fossils are human and it confirms that crackpot theory that we originated from Mars, but had to escape due to global warming.
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u/yungsinatra0 Feb 19 '21
it just blows my mind how far we've gotten already.. but then if you look on the other side, there's still a looooong way to go...
I'm sure our "first contact" will not be the same as depicted in movies and it'll mostly be something like finding microorganisms on Mars or some other similar candidates
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u/CormAlan Feb 18 '21
The livestream was so great. Thought the compliments to everybody’s questions was a little excessive though.
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Feb 18 '21
Watching the room explode into cheers when they had confirmation of a successful landing almost made me cry. It was amazing seeing people realizing their dreams, especially with all the shit going on in the world.
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u/yungsinatra0 Feb 19 '21
I was with my friends in a Discord call and we all just started cheering and clapping when the successful landing was confirmed! Amazing stuff, haha
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u/CormAlan Feb 19 '21
Yeah then the two photos came in and the buzz increased. Glad I made my family watch it.
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u/BuckSaguaro Feb 18 '21
Is there something about this that makes it historical?
As far as landing on Mars goes, we’ve done so successfully like 8 other times in the last 20-30 years.
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u/ZappaZoo Feb 18 '21
What makes this mission different is that it was landed in a hydraulic erosion zone so that samples can be collected in hopes of finding fossilized proof of life. In five years another mission will be sent to collect the samples along with yet another mission to deliver a launcher to bring those samples back to Earth for study.
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u/Thatchers-Gold Feb 19 '21
I’m being impatient here but .. will/can it scan the samples and send data back in the meantime? Could it detect fucky-non-uniform micro abnormalities in the bedrock?
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u/ZappaZoo Feb 19 '21
Those things have been done by other rovers but getting them to a place like this one where the possibility of finding signs of life wasn't as good. Perseverance used radar guided pinpoint accuracy in it's landing to make it possible to be where it is. But the importance of bringing back an actual sample is that it will allow a laboratory here to better analyse and if on finding a sign of life, to maybe find out if it uses a DNA type structure. We want to know if there's life elsewhere, the possibilities of what gives rise to life, and if there's still life (maybe deep in Mars' aquifer). There's some questions about the geology that could be answered too.
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u/Thatchers-Gold Feb 19 '21
That is absolutely fascinating. Can you even imagine how incredible it would be to study the structure of microscopic life that emerged separately from life on Earth?!
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u/salzst4nge Feb 19 '21 edited Feb 19 '21
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Oxygen_ISRU_Experiment
They are actually testing out an oxygen generator.
If successful, this technology will not only be the foundation to supply humans on Mars with oxygen, but also will be the first step to remotely create rocket propellant on mars.
[...] using oxygen generated in-situ form the Martian atmosphere as oxidizer for a hybrid rocket.
Shit's huge in space science world
Edit
Also a new landing system, which allowed landing in a zone that was not accessible before. And this is only the first of three missions to get Mars probes back to earth!
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Feb 19 '21
I heard the presenter say something about it but I assumed that it was a future mission thing.
THAT IS SO COOL. Thanks for you posting that.
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u/salzst4nge Feb 19 '21
But wait, there's more!
With this mission, they also have a probe extractor installed.
And combined with the new landing system, they were able to land in terrain that was not accessible before.
Now, the probe extractor will be placed on the ground to collect ground samples and isolate them in a box. Little box will be chilling for a few years then.
Side Note: One of the reasons development took to long is that they had to make it the "cleanest" thing they ever send into spaces. They don't want the probes contaminated with earth compounds.
In the next mission, planned for 2026, EASA will send another robot who's job is to collect the sample box.
And if everything goes according to plan, the third mission will be a rocket to get that probe back to earth.
By now you know where the fuel for that will come from 😎
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u/aaegler Feb 18 '21
It has a helicopter! If tested successfully it could open up new avenues of reconnaissance/probing. It's called Ingenuity and has been specifically designed to fly in Mars' conditions. Oh, and it also landed on an ancient crater lake so if there was/is life on Mars this would be a likely candidate to find something.
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u/Lando_Hitman Feb 18 '21 edited Feb 18 '21
There's been 45 different missions to Mars and a lot of them failed (some failed spectacularly).
Space is hard and Mars is really difficult to land on, safely.
It wasn't until the 22nd mission did someone finally land on Mars.
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u/Darkstar_5042 Feb 19 '21
Well southern red neck with a beer in his hand can do it with a golf cart.
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u/TAU_doesnt_equal_2PI Feb 19 '21
What's a non-historical event you can think of that's only been done 9 times ever?
We've put men on the moon 12 times and they're all considered historical.
It's not just the firsts that matter. Although this mission also has plenty of firsts.
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u/hi_im_beeb Feb 18 '21
Not sure why you were downvoted, I was wondering the same thing.
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u/Buffythedjsnare Feb 18 '21
This lander selected its own landing spot automatically.
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u/hunisan Feb 18 '21
Maybe the mission itself. Directly looking for evidence of life, and also the helicopter
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u/salteedog007 Feb 18 '21
Watched the whole thing live with my junior science class! Watched the animation first and it worked so well with the live feed- through the first photo! Super awesome experience!
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u/superblobby Feb 18 '21
You surely inspired a future nasa employee, science teachers are the best ☺️
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u/Ancient_Solid_4992 Feb 18 '21
Reminds me of skate videos from the late 90’s
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u/Omny87 Feb 19 '21
And you know what that means: things are about to get...
BULBOUS
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u/Lando_Hitman Feb 18 '21
I'm so relieved Perseverance made it to Mars' surface safely.
Descending through Mars' thin atmosphere is more tricky than it sounds! Kudos to Nasa!
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u/Cadhik Feb 18 '21
has any rover failed to land? I've watched i think 3 of these things and never seen a failed OP
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u/Nouia Feb 18 '21
Only 90’s kids will remember these NASA “landings” that ended up looking more like an orbital bombardment on innocent martians
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u/xerberos Feb 18 '21
Spacecraft arriving at Mars, 1999:
Spacecraft 1, instrument 1: Oh by the way, instrument 2, I speak metric, how about you?
Spacecraft 1, instrument 2: I speak imperial, instrument 1, but I'm sure we'll be fine anyway.
Spacecraft 2, landing legs: Time to extend the legs before landing, here we go! Wow, that was a pretty hard extension jerk!
Space craft 2, engine shut off sensor: Oh, wow, that was a big jerk! I guess we have arrived at the surface already, I better turn off the rocket engine now!
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u/RichestMangInBabylon Feb 18 '21
Good news: Perseverance rover has detected signs of life on Mars
Bad news: There was a mysterious mass extinction event in 1998
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u/Boozhi Feb 18 '21
"Almost 50% of the spacecraft sent to the surface of Mars have failed" said Matt Wallace, Nasa's deputy project manager for Perseverance.
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Feb 18 '21
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u/Ender_D Feb 18 '21
There’s been more than 3 NASA rovers on Mars....
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Feb 18 '21
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u/Ender_D Feb 18 '21
They’ve actually never failed a rover landing, only a single lander landing back in the 90’s.
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u/Lando_Hitman Feb 18 '21
I believe Nasa is 3/3 when it comes to Rovers. However, Mars is a death sentence to other scientific instruments.
It's all because of that ridiculously thin atmosphere. You can't burn off speed solely using the atmosphere as a brake on Mars.
But the atmosphere is too thick to just use rockets.
Mars is hard to land on!
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Feb 18 '21 edited Jun 17 '23
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u/NoGoogleAMPBot Feb 18 '21
Non-AMP Link: https://www.space.com/10930-mars-landings-red-planet-exploration.html
I'm a bot. Why? | Code | Report issues
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u/3rdPedal Feb 18 '21
I'm so happy to be alive during this magical era of space travel.
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u/yetanothersomm Feb 18 '21
Some asshole kid way off in the future is going to be planet hopping with his friends and they are going to chuckle at how pathetic the ancient humans were getting excited about landing a rudimentary robot on the closest planet possible. They couldn't fathom living in such simple times
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Feb 18 '21
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u/yetanothersomm Feb 18 '21
Ha yeah if I thought before I typed I probably would have realized I was spewing falsehoods. Good on you for calling me out
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u/MartPlayZzZ Feb 18 '21
Why don't we actually send rovers to the Venus? Is it because of the Sun? I bet it's even as interesting as the Mars
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u/Chungit1917 Feb 18 '21
Super acidic atmosphere and other environmental dangers means making a rover that can operate there for any amount of time a lot harder than on Mars
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u/fireballetar Feb 18 '21
We did send rovers to Venus but its so hot that they just melt after some minutes or hours so it's financially unattractive to spend 100's of millions to get 5 hours on venus surface (numbers are kinda madeup, but should be close enough)
Edit: I checked and the Rekord of a Rover on the surface of Venus is 127minutes while opportunity for example lasted 15 years... Quite a bit of a difference
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u/zilti Feb 19 '21
We sent landers to Venus - especially the Soviets - but we never sent a rover there.
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Feb 19 '21
Hello future people reading this. Don't judge us so harshly. We are merely apes caught in deciding who's ass butter tastes better.
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u/bsylent Feb 19 '21
I'm amazed by the fact that we sent this thing on a 7th month mission through space to land perfectly on Mars, and all half the people can say is look at that shitty photo. They don't take the few moments required to understand that first, these photos were from the engineering cameras typically used to monitor the integrity of the rover itself; second, the point was simply to give us visual confirmation of the landing, which was awesome; and third, perseverance has some sweet ass cameras that are going to be sending back amazing photos for a long time to come. Quit trying to be snarky and just be grateful and amazed for once
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u/superblobby Feb 19 '21
I’ve had to explain to at least 10 people that this was an initial photo and the high quality pictures come later. So annoying
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u/bsylent Feb 19 '21
I know I saw a couple of your replies, it's hard work. I think the thing that bugs me the most isn't just the lazy comments that are the result of simply not knowing anything about the rover, it's the apathetic lack of amazement. The fact that we exploded a rocket under this thing 7 months ago and landed it perfectly with parachute and all, then snapped this photo and sent it back pretty much immediately should blow everybody's mind. It's a feat at the peak of human achievement, and all people can say is, was just taken with a Game Boy, or whatever snarky little thing gives them a rush of self satisfaction. Take a step back and enjoy something for once lol
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u/Banana_Cat_Man Feb 19 '21
Thanks for the explanation. Just as an FYI though this has made it to the front page - that’s how I’ve ended up here.
Given that we’ve previously seen high res rover photos, it’ll only be natural for people who aren’t following the landing to think new pictures would be of similar or greater quality.
It was my first thought and I now understand why they’re not but I doubt everyone asking the question is deliberately being a troll.
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Feb 18 '21 edited Feb 18 '21
Damn you posted that quick!
Watched it live on yt, this is light work for jpl now. Legends
Has this rover got a drone attached?
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u/Suckage Feb 18 '21 edited Feb 18 '21
Yep, Ingenuity is currently attached to the rovers underside. It’s not really a ‘drone’ though.
https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/
They’re currently preparing to test it.
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u/jojo_31 Feb 19 '21
It's an autonomous drone by definition. I think they just didn't want to use that word so they're not associated with the war stuff and the toys.
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u/wallawalla_ Feb 18 '21
They're estimating that the heli will take flight in about two-months from now. Lots of stuff to test first.
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u/superblobby Feb 18 '21
It doesn’t have a drone but rather a helicopter that they’re planning to launch in March
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u/smallaubergine Feb 18 '21
Just FYI drone can mean anything autonomous. A heli can be a drone
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u/DrMaxCoytus Feb 18 '21
Anyone know what makes this rover different/better than the last two?
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u/PM_Me_Boobies_n_Stuf Feb 18 '21
Upgraded instruments and hardware plus much improved cameras. It's also the first to collect samples for later return to earth
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u/VonGeisler Feb 18 '21
The mini O2 lab sounds awesome. Attempting to create breathable O2 from the CO2 atmosphere. Oh and the copter which will hopefully send us some awesome HD video.
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u/salty-carthaginian Feb 18 '21
It's very similar to MSL, but has different instruments: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/instruments/
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u/DrMaxCoytus Feb 18 '21
Thank you!
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u/browsingnewisweird Feb 19 '21
It's a great question and I think it's worth highlighting-- each subsequent rover up until this point has been of very different design. Curiosity took the lessons of SpiritOpportunity (which learned from Sojourner) and cranked the volume, but now we're seeing them do refinements of the Curiosity design.
As the cost of launches comes down it wouldn't be shocking to have small fleets of proven Curiosity or Perseverance -type rovers all customized to various tasks.
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u/NovaDr3amz Feb 18 '21
I love saving post like these because u can always look back and see how fast time can go by from when something huge happened
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u/Ubiquitous1984 Feb 18 '21
What a cool idea! Do you have any gems to share?
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Feb 18 '21
What is that cross looking object on the horizon?
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u/DocWafflin Feb 18 '21
I think it’s on the lens (probably in software) to identify the top of the image that is actually Mars. The dark part at the top of the image that looks like dark sky is actually part of the rover, everything below that is Mars.
Think of it like a camera under a car, the dark band at the top is the bottom of the car.
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u/schroedingerskoala Feb 19 '21
Percy has landed!
So happy, I do hope the little drone works as planned too, would be so cool! What a time to be alive!
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u/stealth941 Feb 18 '21
I actually thought it would be in colour. Why is it not?
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u/sp4rkk Feb 18 '21
The primary goal of these images is to verify it landed safely in a very quick way. Color images means much more data, time and energy to upload, defeating its purpose, there will be much more later. These are just thumbnails
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u/an_astrophysicist Feb 18 '21
This picture comes from the ' engineer camera ' which is typically used for navigation of the rover but it was used to get a quick photo, though NASA has stated higher resolution and probably coloured pictures will be transmitted to them later in the day
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u/Crushnaut Feb 18 '21
Also to note, these pictures were taken before removing a protective transparent cap. Even images from these cameras will be better.
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u/Black_RL Feb 18 '21
This is great! This is the kind of stuff our species should do! Fantastic!
Congrats to all the people involved!
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Feb 19 '21
Yeah baby, that is what ive been waiting for, thats what's its all about! woooooo!
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u/Cubestructive Feb 18 '21
Very excited to see what this little marvel of technology will reveal to us!
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u/easyier Feb 18 '21
I was really hoping this would have had a humanoid figure giving the peace sign in it
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u/whatafuckinusername Feb 18 '21
This image just makes me want to see something on Venus even more.
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u/Ionlylurkeveryday Feb 19 '21
I'm feeling super optimistic about this mission. Regardless it's already significant but something about this whole mission just feels like we're going to walk away with game changing information / story changing of how we perceive our universe. After 2020 how can we not feel optimistic as fuck.
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u/jschrandt Feb 19 '21
I’ve seen so many joke “first image from the perseverance” posts today on Reddit, I spent a couple minutes looking for the joke. I thought I just didn’t get it until I looked at what subreddit I was on.
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u/affafa Feb 19 '21
ELI5, this is probably going to sound super stupid but anyway, what's keeping us from having a better camera/picture? I'm honestly wondering so serious replies are appreciated.
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u/mrjiels Feb 19 '21
There are a better camera on board. It is currently tucked away to prevent it from being damaged during the landing. This is the only camera that could be used straight away. (It is also the one used while driving)
They are now slowly waking up and testing the different machines and gizmos on the rover and the better camera will be tested and used later.
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u/some-anonymous-guy Feb 19 '21
Good god don’t look at the comments in the post on r/choosingbeggars about this
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u/beerholder Feb 18 '21
My Dad texted me about 3 minutes before landing was confirmed to say "Weird to think this is live but on Mars the landing has already happened - or not"
Blew my tiny mind