Watch the landing live: https://youtu.be/gm0b_ijaYMQ
My sister's husband, Parthiv, works for ATA Engineering! They support the NASA Jet Propulsion Labratory with engineering services. They have been working to help get Perseverence ready for its voyage to Mars! Here's what he told me about their work:
"My company supports NASA JPL with engineering services. We’ve worked on aspects of both the landing and the rover. My own role was to help model the flow of gas and the way 'contaminants' could be transported near the rover and especially near the sample tubes. Contaminants here means potential dormant biological particles that could have traveled from Earth. Since Perseverance is collecting martian samples (for possible future return to Earth) to understand if Mars could have ever supported life they have scientists who worry about 'planetary protection' which means not contaminating one planet with biological signatures from another. Our project was helping them prove that the likelihood of something like this happening could be kept extremely low."
Watch this video to learn about Planetary Protection:
Here's Parthiv and his team observing the landing:
We were so excited to watch as much of this event as we could before our school day ended:
