NASA Mission Trailer Is A Dramatic Sneak Peek At Perseverance's Arrival

NASA has released a dramatic, nearly cinematic 'mission trailer' envisioning what it will look like when its Perseverance rover arrives at Mars next month. The arrival will kick off Perseverance's landing procedures, eventually depositing the rover on the Red Planet where it will conduct many new studies using the latest and greatest instruments.

The new mission trailer is a very high-quality CGI demonstration of what will happen when the Perseverance rover arrives at Mars, is lowered by the descent vehicle, and then released to finish the drop to the ground on its own. The video is surprisingly exciting and comes only weeks ahead of the arrival date.

This appears to be an updated, refined version of the landing sequence video that NASA released back in late December, one that adds some realistic cinematic effects and dramatic music while reducing the nauseating motions that made it look like a video game scene.

The rover will arrive at Mars on February 18, less than a month from now, after making a nearly 300 million mile trip from our planet through space. Perseverance is currently moving at a blistering 1.6 miles per second; once it arrives in the Martian atmosphere, the entire descent will take place in a mere seven nail-biting minutes.

This will mark what NASA says is the first-ever autonomous guided landing on the Red Planet, setting a new record for space exploration. The exploration mission starts once the rover lands, with NASA saying it will head over to the Jezero Crater to look for 'signs of ancient life' on Mars, as well as collecting samples for a future Earth return mission.