Perseverance EDL, 18 Feb 2021 Options

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Good morning from Los Angeles! Today of course is the big day, and this where we'll talk about Perseverance's entry, descent, and landing. For those members who haven't been on UMSF during a Mars landing, days like this have been quite a bit of fun--enjoy!

Please see the Perseverance Arrival- Media Coverage Options thread for links to various ways to watch it happen. NASA TV coverage is now live at 0930 PST (1730 UTC). UMSF's own Emily Lakdawalla, author of "The Design and Engineering of Curiosity", will be hosting a YouTube broadcast of her own and her highly informed commentary interspersed with real-time events from JPL will be a first-class option.

Here's the planned sequence of events in Earth-received time (US Pacific Standard Time) and UTC. Times are of course approximate; there may be variations on the order of a few seconds. Get your peanuts and beverage of choice ready, and let's land on Mars!!!

12:38 (2038 UTC)- Cruise stage separation

12:48 (2048 UTC)- Atmospheric entry interface

12:49 (2049 UTC)- Peak heating, peak deceleration

12:52 (2052 UTC)- Chute deploy

12:52:20 (2052:20 UTC)- Heat shield separation

12:54 (2054 UTC)- Backshell separation, beginning of powered flight

12:55 (2055 UTC)- Skycrane, touchdown