[Music] covering the week's top tech stories with a slight linux bias seven minutes of terror captured on high definition camera as nasa's mars perseverance made his descent to the red planet i'll tell you all about it in a moment but first if you enjoy your weekly tech news with a slight linux bias become part of our fleet choose your rank at patreon.com category5 also make sure you subscribe to our youtube channel and if you like this video please be sure to give it a big thumbs up don't forget to click the bell too to catch the stories we cover each week so on with a story nasa has released the first of its kind high definition camera footage of the successful descent of its perseverance rover to the red planet michael watkins director of nasa's jet propulsion laboratory jpl in southern california said now we finally have a front row view to what we call the seven minutes of terror while landing on mars the mission teams at jpl were able to get 30 gigabytes of data back and more than 23 000 images of the rover making its descent to the surface perseverance plunged through mars atmosphere last week with a protective shell fitted with four cameras firing rocket thrusters to slow down its descent as it approached the surface one of the cameras was on the back shell and faced upward another was on the descent stage and the other two were on the sides the combined views are absolutely stunning matt wallace perseverance deputy project manager at jpl said in nasa's press conference on monday i think you will feel like you are getting a glimpse as to what it would be like to land in the ezreal crater with perseverance the ezreal crater is the location of a former lake from 3.5 billion years ago which many hope will contain evidence for the existence of past life on mars the rover entered the atmosphere at a breathtaking speed of 19 000 kilometers an hour and a supersonic parachute was then deployed which slowed down the speed to 320 kilometers an hour here we see the heat shield being released and plummeting to the surface as the descent stage rocket slowed the rover's speed down to only 2.6 kilometers an hour press advancement now slowed to subsonic speeds and the heat shield has been separated this allows both the radar and the cameras to get their first look at the surface current velocity is 145 meters per second and an altitude of about 10 km nine and a half kilometers above the surface now filter converge velocity solution 3.3 meters per second altitude 7.4 kilometers now has radar lock on the ground current velocity is about 100 meters per second 6.6 kilometers of the surface first advance is continuing to descend on the parachute we are coming up on the initialization of terrain relative navigation and subsequently the priming of the landing engines our current velocity is about 90 meters per second at an altitude of 4.2 kilometers ovf valid we have confirmation that the lander vision system has produced a valid solution and part of terrain relative navigation rhyming pba is nominal we have timing of the landing engines black shell that privilege is 83 meters per second at about 2.6 kilometers from the surface of mars we have confirmation that the back shell has separated we are currently performing the divert maneuver current velocity is about 75 meters per second at an altitude of about a kilometer off the surface of here in safety bravo we have completed our terrain relative navigation current speed is about 30 meters per second altitude about 300 meters off the surface of mars at about 12 seconds before landing the rover itself is lowered by cables 6.4 meters long by a complicated sky crane maneuver and you can see the dust swirling up from during the touchdown about 20 meters off the surface once in landing position the cables are cut safely releasing the rover we're getting signals from mro tango delta touchdown confirmed perseverance faithfully on the surface of mars ready to begin seeking the sands of past life so the footage that we're seeing is real footage of mars now we're actually seeing real high-res video as if like this is like from the movies like this is what we're used to seeing um visual effects people put together for us to yeah enjoy but we're seeing the real thing which to me i mean some of you may think oh well that's you know that so they stuck a camera on a rover and sent it to mars well this is huge because we grew up thinking about that martian planet and things that's right one day we're going to set foot on that i didn't see marvin though no i didn't either but they're looking they are looking for traces of marvin that's right boy oh boy so cool what i'm i'm floored about this yeah this is like dreams coming true for all of us who grew up in that era where you know it's like oh one day we're going to see mars and we're going to see it for real yeah the technology is so cool and becca kind of you know she tongue-in-cheek says it's the the seven minutes of terror and i wanted to just kind of briefly touch on what that means and why it's called that and and what we have to understand and remember is that mars is really far away yeah really far away so when the when the rover is approaching mars and is about to enter the atmosphere what nasa is seeing on their feed is between about 7 to 11 minutes delayed right so as it hits that atmosphere and goes into this automation mode to do the landing that it needs to do that they've programmed using tons of simulations and and data and mathematics and and all of this stuff is now taking place and they know this is happening right now but we're not going to see it for another seven minutes right so you you don't know if it actually works you want to speak about sitting on the edge of your seat after years and years of dreaming and planning and and building spending yes oh boy so when that thing touched down and they got that feedback i mean seven minutes after it actually happened wow yeah what a relief and the fact that um it was such a high speed that it was entering 19 000 kilometers an hour yeah and that it slows it down and it works so perfectly to the point that the platform is hovering yeah like it slows to 2.6 kilometers an hour which i think is like walking speed and then it's just lower than that yeah yeah i guess and then it just hovers well yeah okay 14 kilometers an hour clock me okay i will you've seen me run into the bridge when something's not working oh yeah that's true that's pretty fast like it's it's using those thrusters to kind of float then it releases through cables like that's some precision engineering and play and why would they why on earth are they you know because it looks exceptional because it's so cool no because if the rover were to come down it's going to be top heavy because this thing has flown through space to get there right so the fear is is that as it hits the the martian surface it could flip over yeah and then we're done yep so by building it this way hovering from a platform and then lowering it down safely they've basically completely negated the the fear or the risk of it landing on its head yeah and flipping over when it hits that surface at whatever speed it hits yeah or even things like like breaking the wheels off or you know oh yeah then you're choking yeah so it's a very very controlled descent to the point where okay boom we're six meters up now we're gonna just lower it down softly yeah whoo that's so cool justin mackey perseverance imaging scientist and instrument operations team chief said i had no idea that it would be this amazing when i saw these images come down i have to say i was truly amazed i know it's been a tough year for everybody and we're hoping these images will brighten everybody's day this is it this is mars it really is the surface of an alien world so what do you think about the latest rover touchdown on mars are you eager to see more high resolution footage of the planet as the rover gets to work do you think any existence for alien life will actually be found let us know your thoughts in the comments below from the category 5 tv newsroom i'm becca ferguson thanks for watching [Applause] you