Video: Rocketcams show Mars-bound rover’s ride into space

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Video: Rocketcams show Mars-bound rover’s ride into space

Cameras mounted on United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket show the fiery ride into space for NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover after taking off from

 

Florida’s Space Coast.

 

The Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 7:50 a.m. EDT (1150 GMT) on July 30, kicking off a nearly hour-long ascent

 

that culminated with deployment of the Mars 2020 spacecraft on a trajectory departing Earth and heading into the solar system.

 

The rocket accelerated the Mars 2020 spacecraft, containing the Perseverance rover, to a velocity of nearly 25,000 mph, or 40,000 kilometers per hour, to

 

begin the probe’s six-and-a-half month cruise to the Red Planet. The Perseverance rover is due to land on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021, to begin a mission

 

collecting samples for eventual return to Earth, studying Martian geology and weather, and searching for signs of ancient life.

 

 

 

The video above begins with a view from a downward-facing camera on the Atlas 5’s first stage, showing the 197-foot-tall (60-meter) rocket climbing

 

away from pad 41 with some 2.3 million pounds of thrust from its kerosene-fueled RD-180 main engine and four strap-on solid rocket boosters.

 

The Atlas 5 arced over the Atlantic Ocean to the east from Cape Canaveral, surpassed the speed of sound in 35 seconds, and shed its four strap-on

 

solid rocket boosters just before the two-minute mark of the flight. Moments later, the Atlas 5 jettisoned its aerodynamic nose cone, along with a

 

structure designed to absorb loads during the first few minutes of the launch.

 

The first stage’s kerosene-fed RD-180 fired for nearly four-and-a-half minutes before dropping away, allowing the rocket’s Centaur upper stage to

 

accelerate NASA’s Perseverance rover on an escape trajectory toward Mars.

 

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