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Comment by meepmorp | Hacker News Reader

I was really surprised at how fast the heat shield dropped away, and slightly disappointed that we didn't get to see it hit the ground.

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HiRise captured the whole shebang: An image with the lander, heat shield, descent stage, and parachute. The descender is always a big black smear after these things, which is quite sad.

I'm looking for the link, but the NASA TV feed had it.

Here you go: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/perseverance-and-mars...

Well, there goes the rest of my afternoon.

Edit: no video I can find; I'd just find satisfying to watch it hit the ground, in real time.

I was hoping for the same, but at 9.5km away, and with a decelerating speed of 150m/s we wouldn't see but only a pixel.

I wonder if they have the time/it's in their plan to send the bot over to record where it landed, the state that it's in, etc. If they want to simulate assess the damage, it would be cheaper to make heat shield 50 of them on Earth and drop them from 10-15km. I assume that every minute is gold and they already got a X-days meter-by-meter plan on what to do with little room for free exploration.

> I wonder if they have the time/it's in their plan to send [Perseverance] over to record where [the heat shield] landed

I was thinking the same, but more for the fact that surely the impact has made a hole of some description that could be interesting to look into. Take advantage of the already expended energy to penetrate the surface layers.

But it would be contaminated, toxic and dangerous for the rover (it would contaminate or damage the instruments). Not worth it.

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