By The Financial District
Feb 20, 20211 min
After safely landing on the surface of Mars, NASA's Perseverance rover has sent back a never-before-seen view: What it looks like to land on Mars.
The rover also returned some beautiful postcards of its landing site. The first image shared during a NASA press conference Friday was "exhilarating" for the team when they received it.
It shows the rover nearing the Martian surface during entry, descent and landing.
A camera on the descent stage of the spacecraft captured the perspective, something that wasn't possible on previous missions, Ashley Strickland reported for CNN.
"This shot from a camera on my 'jetpack' captures me in midair, just before my wheels touched down," according to a tweet from the Perseverance Twitter account.
"The moment that my team dreamed of for years, now a reality. Dare mighty things."
"The team is overwhelmed with excitement and joy to have successfully landed another rover on the surface of Mars," said Adam Steltzner, the rover's chief engineer.
"When we do such investments, we do them for humanity, and we do them as a gesture of our humanity."
The mission will do another first by deploying the helicopter “Ingenuity” to fly over the Martian surface and send more images to NASA.