ketchum confirmed perseverance
faithfully on the surface of mars ready
to begin seeking the sands of past life
oh i love a man so invested in his work
you couldn't see there was jonathan
punching air
punching air at that moment that he
touched down he loves it look at him
his work he's completely that was
fantastic that was
textbook wasn't it jonathan
it was absolutely perfect uh it really
was i mean you know there was a lot of
acronyms in there which
only sort of geeks like myself uh really
understand
um but you know there were there were
moments when it was when it was on the
surface and they they had to wait
you know i i spoke to you about those
pyrotechnics didn't i
about how they have to cut them the last
pyrotechnics that fire
cut the cables and they have to be sure
that they've cut the the sky crane
doesn't drag the rover away
because those cables won't cut and so
you heard them say
rim you stable that meant the rover
wasn't moving
um uhf was stable
that meant that the sky crane hadn't
crashed down on top
uh and so once they'd heard all of that
they waited a few seconds
and then they declared it touchdown
confirmed absolutely beautiful yeah
you know what we have to reflect on as
well is this is such an international
effort we're looking at the control room
there
at nasa but when that parachute deployed
there was a little team
in tibetan in devon that were jumping
for joy
there's a small company there called
heathcote fabrics and they make
parachutes from lace and silk and
they've been making parachutes
since the second world war and they now
make the parachute for this rover to
descend onto the martian
surface quite extraordinary really and
and there are little
teams like that all around the world
that have contributed to this jonathan
and can i can i just jump in because we
do have some breaking news apart from
the fact that the perseverance has
landed on mars
the rover has tweeted already i'm
safe on mars perseverance will get you
anywhere
hash down count down to mars
great talk to me about those teams
jonathan i mean who's contributed to
this
uh well there are some big contributions
uh that are done through bilateral
agreements that nasa has
with other space agencies so for example
the
the french have produced one of the the
laser type instruments that the rover's
going to use
the spanish have provided the weather
system uh that it has
um but yeah they they've got all sorts
of people working on it you know i mean
one of the
one of the scientists that's planned the
route is is british
there's everybody who's got a finger in
their pie
i should say that the thing that i'm
waiting for now is
is a picture of jezreel crater this
rover was programmed as soon as you
touch
down you take a picture in front and you
take a picture back and how long does
that take time
to send them straight to work the
question is
it should come back very very soon very
soon indeed
is that it yes so just explain jonathan
that's the picture there it is already
so i thought it was going to take 11
minutes
that is the picture that is amazing no
no no no no
so what what they were hoping to do was
to get a picture back
before the satellite which has relayed
this disappeared over the horizon
and then they'd have to wait several
hours until another one came over
now this this tells the engineers what
the surface is like
that they've landed on i mean you can
see from that where
we're to me that looks like the front of
the rover um
you can just see the elbow of the
robotic arm there
um and there'll be a picture come that
will come from the back actually
you can tell that that's the the robotic
arm there because you can see the
the shadow of the equipment there on the
ground but they'll have a picture from
behind
as well and what i'm hoping is that
we'll see
that cliff um which is the target of
where
uh they want to uh to to go in the next
uh
few months now of course um you they can
put it down to within a few hundred
meters they can't actually tell you
which orientation
uh it's going to be we'll let them off
uh with that
but amazing to get this picture
overnight tonight we may get the first
of these little movies
that were taken from the vehicle as it
came down you'll see the ground
approaching the rover as it neared the
surface
of mars but it's terrific this is this
is what it's all about and
and now we've got several years ahead of
us to uh to trundle around this crater
and
and you know potentially make the
greatest ever scientific discovery you
know what
what bigger scientific discovery is
there
than to detect life uh beyond earth
there really isn't is there and you know
even if it doesn't
um that's really interesting as well you
know if we don't detect life on mars
we then have to ask ourselves well why
didn't we
you know we know that it was habitable
three and a half four billion years ago
why wasn't there life on mars like there
was on earth
and you know it's kind of you start
thinking
well maybe there has to be some sort of
special spa it's not a case that
you know you build it and they come that
life just happens
there needs to be something special that
occurs clearly happened on earth
did it happen on mars that's what we
want perseverance to tell us
amazing