Something that's out of this world really means that it's incredible. Well something incredible is happening 131 million miles from Earth. Find out what in our online learning lab. Greetings students. Offer day wall cats. Welcome wall cats. Come back wall cats. You safe out there. Happy New Year. Have a good day everybody. Let's get started. Touchdown confirmed. First of all, take away. On a fifth of the month. Ready to be in thinking of them. A pathway. Yes, it's a very exciting time in robotics right now. After years of development at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Perseverance Rover is finally operational 131 million miles away at our neighboring planet Mars. It landed on February 18th and here is the first picture of the rover as it's landing onto the surface. And here is one of the first photos of the terrain at the landing site, the Jezero crater, which scientists believe may have held water millions of years ago. Isn't this cool? This is a recorded life feed of the Mars terrain. How did the Perseverance Rover go from traveling through space cramped in a tiny round spacecraft to jetly landing on the Martian surface, wheels first and ready to roll? Let's look at what scientists call the seven minutes of terror. Otherwise known as entry descent and landing. Before entering the atmosphere, the spacecraft sheds what's called the cruise stage, which houses the solar panels, sensors and fuel tanks. Perseverance enters the atmosphere at supersonic speeds at 12,000 miles per hour compared to an F-16 jet that only goes 1,500 miles per hour. Here is the heat shield that can reach 2,370 degrees Fahrenheit or about the temperatures in a volcano, while the rover inside is safe and cool. The spacecraft then slows its speed to 1,000 miles per hour. There's a new sensor called the Range Trigger that automatically deploys the supersonic parachute when the craft senses that it's close to the surface. The parachute is about 70 feet in diameter or about the size of a ferrous wheel. At 6,900 feet above the ground, the heat shield separates and the descent stage powers its eight engine rocket and takes over. As the ground keeps getting closer, the computer of the descent stage uses its cameras and radar data and compares those information to pre-existing maps of the surface to find the safest place to land, like a sky-over. Then it slows down to about 1.7 miles per hour and does the sky-crain maneuver where it lowers the rover on a set of cables that are 21 feet long. Touchdown, the descent stage cuts the cables and safely flies away to crash down somewhere far away, leaving the rover free to start exploring its new environment. Now the Perseverance rover can concentrate on its main mission on Mars, which is astrobiology, such as searching for signs of ancient microbial life, sort of like searching the ground for Martian dinosaurs. Perseverance is prepared with the latest equipment with cool names like Moxie, Meta and Pixel. It's the fifth rover sent to Mars by the United States, but for the first time, this rover is going to collect samples that will be picked up and sent back to Earth, plus it's not alone. Tucked inside the rover is ingenuity, a helicopter drone that will be tested for surveillance and a host of other possibilities. Don't hold your breath that Perseverance will find any little green men along the way though, but like a lot of things with the Perseverance rover, that would be cool. I hope that wasn't too much information. You can always go back and watch it again, and like the video. Okay, my students, I've given you some learning materials. Now it's your turn to go check your Google Classroom and to look for your assignment. As always, stay safe and see you next week. .