The final launch to Mars for the next two years looked pretty epic – Ars Technica

The final launch to Mars for the next two years looked pretty epic - Ars Technica thumbnail

Study about Percy fly —

An Atlas V introduced the Florida skies alive.


  • Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is on its plan.

  • The mighty “Dominator” Atlas V 541 goes supersonic with our most modern Mars rover.

  • The resplendent backdrop is courtesy of the commence going down perfect a pair hours after morning time.

  • Four stable-rocket motors and a single RD-180 engine fabricate quite a lot of smoke and fireside.

  • So powerful smoke.

  • And so powerful fireplace.

  • Here’s a see of the commence in infrared.

  • The Atlas V rocket has launched NASA’s outdated four missions to Mars.

  • This image offers a beautiful see of the rocket launching from Home Birth Advanced-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Pressure Location.

  • Love the pillar of smoke.

  • Four solids give the Atlas V rocket a kick off the pad.

  • Love this image.

  • An honest vantage level shows the rocket lifting off over the Atlantic Ocean.

  • Good vapor cone!

  • Goodbye, Percy!

On Thursday morning, an Atlas V rocket launched NASA’s most modern rover, Perseverance, to Mars.

This marked the third of three launches to the crimson planet in 2020—following the UAE’s Hope and China’s Tianwen-1 missions—and it came shut to the closing of this year’s month-prolonged “window” to the crimson planet. For the length of this sort of window, which comes round about every 26 months, spacecraft can educate an elliptical orbit such that they might maybe well maybe arrive on the website in snarl where Mars will likely be seven months from now—making the shortest conceivable rush to the crimson planet.

Even the smallest missions to Mars want a highly efficient rocket to commence, and right here is terribly upright for a rover that might maybe well maybe maybe also be the greatest object NASA has ever tried to land on the crimson planet’s surface. Perseverance weighs a tiny extra than a metric ton.

For this mission, NASA selected an Atlas V rocket with four stable rocket boosters. The rocket built by United Birth Alliance took flight beneath determined skies from Cape Canaveral Air Pressure Location, and, well, we are going to damage writing since the photos of this myth commence discuss for themselves. We’re no longer distinct we have ever seen a extra breathtaking Atlas V commence.

Itemizing image by NASA

Study More

Leave a comment

Sign in to post your comment or sign-up if you don't have any account.

yeoys logo