Russia: Perseverance is the property of all mankind

Kremlin praises NASA's successful Perseverance landing

The Kremlin welcomes the landing of an American research space probe on Mars, Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian president said, RIA Novosti reports.

According to him, such space achievements are the property of mankind.

Every country that has its own space program is a competitor "in the positive sense of the word." Competition drives the industry forward, he added.

"I repeat once again: any success, of course, is worthy to be welcomed, but, of course, our country has its own ambitious space exploration program," he concluded.

On February 18, Perseverance Mars rover landed in the vicinity of Jezero crater on Mars. NASA reported that two images taken on the surface of Mars have already been received on Earth.

In accordance with the plan, Perseverance entered the atmosphere of Mars without entering the planet's orbit at a speed of about 20,000 kilometers per hour (prior to that, the landing module undocked from the flight module of the spacecraft). After the speed in the upper atmosphere was decreased, the Perseverance parachute was triggered, and then a heat shield was dropped to protect the rover when entering the atmosphere.

For the first time in history, a navigation system was used during landing: during the descent, the rover studied the surface of Mars to find the most suitable landing point. At the next stage, the rover undocked from the capsule with the parachute. Immediately afterwards, small rocket engines of the lander were activated to deliver Perseverance to the desired point. At an altitude of 20 meters from the surface of Mars, the rover was gently lowered onto it on the ropes, and the lander flew away to a safe distance, and the landing on Mars was confirmed.

NASA's seven minutes of terror and years of work were worth it

The entire automatic landing process took seven minutes. NASA called this period of time "seven minutes of terror", because any deviation from the plan could be fatal for the rover, whereas mission engineers could not affect the operation of Perseverance systems due to a signal delay of eleven minutes.

The Perseverance landing was more complicated in comparison with landings of previous Martian rovers and research stations because the area chosen for Perseverance to land on had a complex rocky relief. It took NASA engineers several years to plan the rover's landing.

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