After 404 Days on Mars, Perseverance Has Finally Spotted Its Parachute

More than 13 months after the Perseverance rover landed on Mars, its cameras have finally spotted some of the parts of the Mars 2020 landing system that got the rover safely to the ground.

The parachute and backshell were seen by Perseverance's MastCam-Z, just south of the rover's current location. The image was taken on April 6, 2022.

Normally, the rover would take a short side-trip early on in the mission to take pictures of the landing system. Perseverance had to drive around some hazardous terrain to get to the large area of Jezero Crater that the science team wanted to study.

The rover finally got to the area where the parachute landed. The Skycrane dropped the parachute during the landing so it could lower the rover to the ground.

Sol 404: Parachute Found.@NASAPersevere Sol 404 pic.twitter.com/sExaxitYHu

— Kevin M. Gill (@kevinmgill) April 10, 2022

The parachute had a secret message hidden within the folds and colors of the material.

You can see the traverse map below and the image of the parachute and backshell that was taken by the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The image was taken a day after the landing.

Perseverance has a location map on Sol 405.

Perseverance on Mars is the first HiRISE image. The University of Arizona is a part of NASA.

The many parts of the descent system can be seen in the HiRISE image of the Perseverance Rover. There is an area of about 200 meters across.

The Skycrane lowered the rover to the ground and created a blast pattern that sits at the center of the rover. The Skycrane flew off to crash and created a V-shaped debris pattern.

Perseverance is trying to get to the next target location for the second science campaign, an area that looks like a large river delta. The team knew they would have to backtrack later to reach the delta, so they chose to study South.

Perseverance is going under a tenth of a mile per hour in a drive campaign to reach the delta, which is faster than any previous rover. Perseverance is using an auto-nav feature to make tracks and is making rapid progress by devoting several hours per day to driving on very smooth terrain.

Perseverance drove 319.8 meters on Sol 351, breaking previous records for the distance traveled in one day.

There were a number of drives over 100 meters, but not many over 200. It was due to rockier terrain. After landing in 2004, Opportunity was able to travel up to 228 meters in one day using solar power, thanks to some very smooth patches of terrain.

The latest news about Perseverance can be found at the mission update blog.

The landing system and why Perseverance was able to find the various parts is explained in this great video.

The article was published by Universe Today. The original article is worth a read.