Seven Minutes of Terror

UPDATE: See the video captured by Perseverance's onboard cameras during part of the Seven Minutes of Terror. From chute deployment to touchdown. Just unbelievable!

I will never not be excited for a space launch, or in today’s case a landing. Having grown up during the moon race, it just comes with the territory.

Today, NASA’s Perseverance Rover will make its difficult and dramatic landing on Mars and begin one of the most ambitious space exploration missions in history. You may have missed this story. It seems to have gotten lost in a cacophony of headlines covering the winter storm crisis in Texas and the death of an infamous radio star.

If today goes as planned, Perseverance will be the 16th spacecraft to attempt a Mars landing and just the ninth U.S. probe to succeed. That is, if it survives what mission scientists call Seven Minutes of Terror.

How long is seven minutes anyway?

My coffee maker takes about seven minutes to brew half a pot. The typical Bugs Bunny cartoon we all watched as kids was just over seven minutes long. In space terms, seven minutes is almost the time it takes sunlight to travel to Earth.

Spaceflight, though, challenges our perception of time. Perseverance has taken six and a half months to cross 293 million miles. That, we are told, is a relatively quick interplanetary trip. Even though it seemed much longer, the SpaceX Crew Dragon only took eight and a half minutes to get into Earth orbit last summer. The Apollo astronauts of my youth, spent four days voyaging to the Moon. Their first, white-knuckled landing seemed to take hours. In reality, it spanned only 13 minutes. Tragically, the entire, ill-fated flight of the Space Shuttle Challenger lasted just 73 seconds.

What happens during those seven minutes

For NASA, today’s critical seven minutes might be less risky than a human spaceflight, but they are no less complicated.

The Seven Minutes of Terror begin when Perseverance tears into the Martian atmosphere at over 12,000 miles per hour. At that speed, you could fly from L.A. to New York in about 15 minutes. The ship’s protective shell will heat up to thousands of degrees as resistance with the atmosphere slows it. Soon after, the largest supersonic parachute ever used in spaceflight will deploy, slowing the craft even more. Next, the heat shield will drop off and a sophisticated landing system will scout out a safe spot to set down. Then the rover, attached to a framework of fuel tanks and landing rockets, will freefall away from the parachute. Finally, the tricky part. Rockets will slow the spacecraft's descent to a near hover and cables will lower Perseverance – about the size of a Toyota Corolla - to a gentle touchdown.

The whole harrowing trip, from space to wheels-on-the-ground, 12,000 miles per hour down to 1.7 miles per hour, happens in just seven short minutes.    

The terrifying part

For scientists, today is about doing something they are not used to doing - taking a leap of faith. The entire entry-deceleration-landing sequence must go off precisely and in order. And since it all happens faster than radio signals can zoom between Earth and Mars, engineers at Mission Control can do little more than watch. Perseverance must perform all on its own. There is no practice flight, no “abort” button, and no chance for a do-over.

If all goes well today, the promise of this mission is greater than any previous Mars flight. Perseverance will land in a crater, and within driving distance of an extinct river delta. These are areas that may give scientists their best shot at finding evidence of ancient microbial life. For the first time, microphones on Perseverance will allow us to hear what Mars sounds like. Perseverance will take core samples and cache them for a potential return to Earth. Most incredibly, Perseverance will launch Ingenuity: a drone helicopter that will be the first aircraft to fly on another world. Its camera will shoot images of the Martian landscape that are ten times sharper than photos taken from orbit.     

If we can do this …

The sheer scope of the mission and the number of things that must “go right” during those Seven Minutes of Terror, speaks to the ungodly technological advances we have made. If our best and brightest can pull off this daredevil stunt - from millions of miles away - how can we not conquer a virus or wipe out hunger and poverty? Sure, a lot is riding on what happens during today’s Seven Minutes of Terror. Included is the hope, potential and promise of what humans can achieve.