Mars Perseverance - The Rover has landed

There are only a few events when human global attention participates, that does not concern with a dramatic moments such a terror attack or outbreak of other evil. A positive event - such was the landing of  the Perseverance Rover on 18th February 2021 - caught the global attention and everybody could watch it from the convenience of a sofa, thanks to the internet and live broadcast. We, as millions of others, did join in.

Perseverance was another human-made object to land on Mars, after InSight in 2018, Curiosity, in 2012, opportunity in 2004, Pathfinder in 1996, Viking 1 in 1975 - to name the most famous with NASA successful and advanced publicity. 

First landing on Mars was done by the Soviet Union in December 1971, and was a partial success, as contact was lost 110 seconds after landing. 

We have watched the whole broadcast so carefully that we even saw the Surface Manager Operator in the background - a person with a mop, while others were in front of the screens utterly engaged in the operations. Interestingly - we have also noticed  - there were more women then men in the mission room and broadcast. 

The was a bit of terror however - 'the 7 minutes of terror' - the time between going off and landing, as NASA calls, were of utmost thrill, ending in a spectacular cheer when all went well and the first broadcast from Mars was screened to millions of rooms around the globe.  

Perseverance, a laboratory on wheels, landed in the Jezero crater, a promising site for micro-fossils. 

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To turn the Mars story on its head - we had bought a book about Mars, a few weeks earlier. It was originally published in 1997 and was one of many who contemplated that Mars had been inhabited, probably millennia ago. 

The famous Head on Mars caught attention in the 1980s, and so prevailed in the collective memory that our friends, watching the Perseverance landing, humorously anticipated the Aliens will pop out. 

We'll see what the future holds... :)