Thread by @WeAreSpaceScout

Upcoming: The #Perseverance Post-Landing briefing.

We'll be covering and live-tweeting it in the thread below.
#CountdownToMars #Mars2020
(thread)

You can listen in here, on NASA TV's media channel.

https://twitter.com/NASAMars/status/1362532294007746561

Briefing starting soon...

Participants for today's post-#Perseverance landing at JPL:

Steve Jurczyk, NASA Acting Administrator
Mike Watkins, JPL Director
@Dr_ThomasZ
Lori Glaze, NASA Science Director
Matt Wallace..

And a lot more.

Jurczyk: "Amazing, incredible day. Could not be more proud of the team. Also have to tell you, an hour after landing, I got a phone call from @POTUS, his first words were "Congratulations, man!" and I knew it was him. He talked about how proud he was of what we accomplished."

"@POTUS wanted to send his regards to Percy, congratulate the team, and do so personally this week. You know, 9 landings on Mars, we're the only nation that's able to do that. Thousands working at JPL, NASA centers, industry & international, DoE for RTGs, thank you to DoE."

"This mission is amazing for science and technology, but for our bigger plans, like understanding if there's ancient life, and preparing for human missions to Mars. This is a major step and we're taking our steps to embark on that journey."

"Everything went pretty much according to plan. I heard the signal and saw the image, and I was overcome with emotion. Didn't get much sleep last night, but think I'll get a lot this night. Turning it over to @Dr_ThomasZ"

@Dr_ThomasZ: "I want to share something that happens when I'm by myself. Every time we launch/land, we get what we wanted, and the contingency plan. Here's the contingency plan. (Zurbuchen tears apart the plan.)"

"I will tell you later about my emotions, but roll the video please, show the moment we had."

"It was an amazing moment, I have to tell you, reacting the first 5 seconds, I was overcome with emotions and tearing up. I thought about a statement made 20 minutes before, when one of the leaders said this is the first time for months that we're all in the same room"

"I was so proud and moved by that team. I was reminded of a statement by a famous coach, what are the 3 most things that create success, in priority? The team, the team, and the team. And I want to thank the team for that."

"For me this is not an end but a beginning. Here the science starts. Every yard on the surface of Mars is a yard of Mars Sample Return. One of the first texts I got from the international community was from David Parker of ESA, and I told him how excited we are to work with them"

"We're already starting to develop Mars Sample Return (huge NASA-ESA cooperation). There's a whole bucket of miracles needed to achieve that and we just took some of those off the table, but the future of Mars exploration is so broad and exciting."

"Leaders - many of which are still in school - will be the ones to lead these. And we need them. And think of int'l partners. We had 11 nations cooperate for Perseverance. France, Spain, and Norway all contributed instruments. The French PM was there with the team celebrating."

Zurbuchen hands it over to Mike Watkins.

"I'd like to welcome everyone virtually to JPL here. I miss the fact you all aren't here with us today. I hope you still feel part of this and feel free to engage. On behalf of JPL, I have to say, we have a fantastic team, no question about it. But I want to also notice the rest"

"It took a lot of folks to make this mission successful. We had to keep this mission going, we had to use our virtual office, and keep everyone safe on the lab with PPE and facility changes. We had to change the tires while going down the highway."

"I hope you are sharing the magic that I do personally. All of the great panoramas and the photos and the helicopter flight - we will follow along with those. There is something special about those first few days though. We just landed an Earth representative on Mars."

A clip of Zurbuchen tearing up the contingency papers.

https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1362539546643226634?s=20

Lori Glaze, head of planetary science division: "Wow, there's just so much excitement and emotion here. I of course have to extend my thanks as well to the entire team, who really had to work under adverse conditions over the last year, and have worked hard for the years prior."

"We all worked together as one big team. The Mars 2020 team. It's such an honor to be here and sit here. The capabilities are just astounding and I'm so proud of what we've accomplished. It's truly exciting now that we're on the ground - the fun really starts."

"Fantastic, I can't wait to get the instruments turned on. In particular over the next few days, we'll get the EDL imagery and look at the data that came back and see it and live it. And every one of us will see that way down. Looking forward to that."

"Shoutout to the more than 1 million students that joined the Mars Student challenge."

(Applause at JPL.)

"Fantastic, we're just so excited that so many young people have gotten engaged with this mission, it's incredibly inspiring."

Passing over to John McNamee: "I slept like a baby, had breakfast, landed on Mars, had a pretty good day. I had probably closer knowledge than the rest of the quality of the team. That includes JPL but also NASA HQ and the technical establishment here and the industry."

"Also, our international partners and a wealth of contractors that contributed. We all celebrated this difficult task together. They delivered, tested, and landed. I'll turn it over to the operations team and science team in a minute. Now they have a real job to do."

"Thanks to all who contributed it. I would argue if you looked up Perseverance in the dictionary, you should see the faces of everyone here."

Turning it over to Matt Wallace.

Wallace: "Pleasure working with you for last 8 years. You just saw this team do one of the hardest tasks. We had to slow down from 12,000 miles per hour in 7 min. and put Perseverance down in Jezero. Supersonic parachute, 10 Gs of decel, terrain nav, 8 engines, it's never easy"

"It's just a difficult thing to do, and it's very gratifying and quite a relief to be through it. The spacecraft is in great shape, we got through EDL very well, We did transition into our surface mode as expected."

(Wallace brings up HazCam imagery.)

"That's Jezero Crater right there. You can see the shadow of the vehicle and the horizon. Great thing to see. Next thing we'll do that we've also never tried, we've never tried to bring the team into our press conference and we wanted to try to do that. Everyone ready?"

(Mars2020/Perseverance team now cheers in the background as they're all brought up on screen)

"This is the team that built the computers, the structures, the radars, the prop tanks and the thrusters, actuators, robot arms, sampling systems, these guys just never rest. Terrific science instruments and technology payloads. They did it days, nights, all shifts, remarkable."

"They look good on TV, I think. Got to see some faces, families, and pets. Congratulations to the whole team!"

Allen Chen: "Never gets old landing on Mars. Thank you to the project team and EDL family. A side benefit of our navigation system is we know very well where we went. We're 1.7km to the southeast of the center."

"We landed in a relatively rugged area, and the terrain relative navigation managed to find us a safe spot in the midst of areas that could kill us on landing. The system was essential on getting us down. Vehicle only tilted by 1.2 degrees."

The terrain relative navigation map. Red = death.

Jennifer Trosper: "Thank you, Al. I'm happy to feel like I'm dreaming today. One of the most important things here is to introduce you to another portion of the team - who are awaiting the Odyssey overflight which will happen at 4:30 p.m., and at 6:30, TGO will overfly too."

"Both will relay a lot of data. If all goes well we'll get HazCams with deployed color, some thumbnail videos from the EDL cameras, and an actual image from the descent camera on the skycrane. We're all on the edge of our seats."

"The batteries are charged at 95%, everything looks great. We're excited to get the next set of information. The team will get some images tonight, but over the next few days we'll spend time 'unwrapping' the rover. The mast will be deployed and the high-gain antenna too."

"Right now, the rover is communicating to orbiters via a UHF antenna, we are hoping to switch to high-gain and talk to it directly. We will spend some time transitioning to new software too and finish checkouts, then drive to the helicopter demo location."

"We might drive around the ripple fields, we don't like spending time there. In summary, it's great to be able to share the success and I'm so happy for the team. They have pushed through so many challenges. We're excited to share this success with everybody."

Handoff to Ken Farley: "I would follow on with what Jurczyk said. Wow, we have a science mission. It has been a long road to get here. One of the things I'd like to point out is this mission is like a decades-long relay race. The moment the pandemic closed in we raced to launch."

"The second leg was the cruise stage, and the third is the surface operations. People come and go through every phase. Thank you all so much to everyone and we'll do you proud in the science mission."

"As for where we are and what we know, we landed SE of the delta (2km) and right on the boundary between two geologic units. This is a great place to be and scientists love to see how two units come together."

Landing location.

"These images (HazCams) are only taken in the red color bands We'll learn more as early operations complete. In the background we believe we can see the cliffs of the Delta. We can see sand dunes and our scientist said, 'Looks like Mars..' Science team is really excited."

QA starting now.

CBSNews for Allen Chen: "Could you take us back and describe what was going through your mind and your emotions as the 7 minutes of terror were taking place and your reaction when it touched down?"

"It's hard to really describe. You think you're prepared, you know there's risk and uncertainty, but I don't think a single work day went by for the last 9 years where we didn't worry about EDL. Did you make the right choices, test right things, etc.? We clearly did here."

"It consumes you and it becomes part of you. It's hard to believe we're done and it feels surreal. You have to be terrified of it and respect it and believe that you can do it."

(That was not Allen Chen who answered - we missed who did.)

Allen Chen: "The spacecraft is going through a rollercoaster and so are you. You're second guessing yourself the entire time even though it's already happened. I'm very fortunate I get to work in this place."

@AP: "All those red dots surrounding a blue patch, how close do you think you came to something that could've doomed the mission?"

Allen Chen: "In general we make these maps scarier than they look - the maps get saturated at 4% hazard - so we respect it. But the system worked."

@UPI: "To what extent do you expect any deviations in Perseverance's planned route? How much imagery do you think you will get from the EDL cameras?"

Trosper: "Over the next few days we'll get those images. Where we might go, that depends."

"When will we know if Perseverance's microphone worked"

Trosper: "We'll hopefully get those recordings overnight."

@pbsnewshour: "My question follows on the last two. About the EDL imagery, can you talk a bit about how those will come down. Is that all of them? Do you expect it all to come down in the next few hours, or will that trickle in? When will it be released?"

Wallace: "For the first time we'll see ourselves land in HD on another planet. We put several commercial ruggedized cameras on the rover. We think we captured some spectacular video. They come w/ microphones as well. We are hoping to bring one image tomorrow."

"Hopefully we'll see that and that'll be remarkable. But the first video will be over the weekend and try to bring that to the conference on Monday."

@StephenClark1: For Trosper: "What is the timeline for the next few days and when the covers will deploy, hi-gain antenna, mast, first drive, etc.?"

For @Dr_ThomasZ: "The Mars Sample campaign was hinging on the outcome today, any comments on relief today?"

Trosper: "This is Sol 0. After it landed, the pyros did release the hi-gain antenna and lens covers. The first 4/5 sols will be stabilizing the rover. Tomorrow on Sol 1 we want to point the high-gain antenna at Earth and start commanding via the antenna. On Sol 2 we deploy mast."

"On Sol 2, once we deploy the Mast, we'll deploy the first color panoramas, and then the MastCam-Z will take those panoramas on Sol 3. That'll take us to Sol 4, where we start to load and burn into the computer the new software, which takes 4 days."

"At the end of that is the next set of checkouts, arm deploy, 5 meter test drive, etc. Once that is checked out we'll drive towards the heli site. That ends up being a few weeks away, but we're excited."

@Dr_ThomasZ: "There's a lot of friends all over the world who are breathing a sigh of relief. The Sample Return colleagues are working together on an amazing mission to bring the samples back."

"We always bet on success. That's what we want to achieve and that's what we're planning for. To deploy sample return saves a lot of money and makes this mission much more effective. We can use what we have now and move towards that return."

Glaze: "It's always nervewracking as we go through EDL - but doubly so as Mars Sample Return is reliant on the success of Perserverance. Definitely breathed a sigh of relief. Very exciting we just embarked on Chapter 1 of return for real."

@SPACEdotcom: "How long will the helicopter flights take, and when will the rover start doing science?"

Trosper: "Depending on how close that site is, it'll take up to 10 sols to get there. We'll spend 30 sols for the helicopter demo. Takes 10 to deploy heli and move away."

"We'll be flying the helicopter in the spring here, and after that we'll drive towards the first science site, and that's when we'll do the first sampling. Summer is the time frame. Might be faster, might be slower. That's the longer plan."

"Conjunction is in September, where due to sun occlusion we can't communicate. After conjunction we'll submit some autonomous software that lets us work even faster."

Times Of London: "Can one of you please give us some examples of the complexities of the challenges you faced under COVID? How will it continue to affect those operations?"

Farley(?):"The pandemic struck at just about the worst time. We had just shipped the vehicle down to KSC."

Correction. That was Wallace.

"We had to figure out how many people could stand around the rover, how close they could be in the cleanroom, trying to understand from our support community for the cleanrooms or vacuum chambers and if they'd still be there to deliver."

"We had people here who had to travel to JPL and we couldn't do so commercially - @NASAArmstrong gave us a jet, we got support out of @NASA_Wallops to fly some of our hardware there and back. Very challenging time. And then we had to do launch too."

"The team's worried about their parents, kids, grandparents, taking care, so it was a tough time. We actually decided to try to put a COVID plate on the port side of the rover, now sitting on Jezero, and that plate is there to symbolize the challenge we all faced."

Trosper: "Doing all of that remotely, without that much interaction, is hard for the team. The science team is fully remote - I work from my laundry room, the kids are on Zoom, everyone has these challenges. But the team has been fantastic and overcome every challenge."

"We now have robots where if you're remote, you can log in, move around the rooms and talk to people. There will be a time where we can all be together. A lot of the excitement here was the energy of all being together. It'll be fun and great for the team."

@latimes: "Will COVID affect the experience of 1. Mars Time and 2. Driving"

Trosper: "We get up on Mars time and the clock shifts 40 minutes/day. That works when we're all together, not alone. But we have a few dozen who are remote but come to different areas here for Mars time"

"The drivers have some unique equipment, so we have special locations and equipment for them. We have about 50 people here on-console for Mars time."

Irish TV: "I have a detailed geology question for Farley, but Trosper mentioned a robot communication method."

Trosper: "It's a robot you can log in to, your face will be there, you can drive up next to people and have a conversation from your home. It's just a robot."

Irish TV: "The other tradition at JPL is the journalist with the geeky question - have you landed at (unintelligible) and if that is where you have landed, have you looked at the delta formation, and would you consider doing a run to Channel Islands rather than to the Delta?"

Farley: "The science team has associated specific locations named after national parks. We will very likely go to the Delta."

Social Media Q: "Was today's landing the best so far?"

Matt: "YES. Very much yes. Out of 5 rovers, this is the best landing."

Today's briefing concluded. Next is at 10 a.m. PST tomorrow.

Go Perserverance!

UNROLLED THREAD:
threadreaderapp.com/thread/1362531…