By Tim Binnall
NASA has released a breathtaking video that shows last week's captivating moment when the Perseverance Rover's made its harrowing touchdown on Mars. According to the space agency, the footage (seen above) was "captured by several cameras that are part of the rover's entry, descent, and landing suite." In the video, the parachute-equipped rover plunges through the Martian atmosphere headed towards the surface of the Red Planet and ultimately comes to rest on the dusty ground to the cheers of NASA engineers tracking the descent from here on Earth.
Associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate Thomas Zurbuchen marveled that the video is "the closest you can get to landing on Mars without putting on a pressure suit." At a press event unveiling the footage on Monday, the space agency also shared an amazing panorama photo taken by Perseverance from within the Jezero crater. Additionally, NASA released some historic audio in the form of the first-ever recordings of sounds from Mars which were captured by microphones attached to the rover.