Tango Delta - Perseverance sticks the landing!!!

Another Skycrane 11 minutes of terror!

Working from home that day, so I got to watch the landing live stream from NASA that morning before picking up the kids for the school drop.

Watching the mission operators sweat out the landing, and the poor bloke they had providing the commentary was fun and moving. These people had a lot invested, so seeing their joy when the lander sent back each successive completed phase was great. I punched the air with them when the call of "Tango Delta" was announced.

Very quickly the first image from the Nav Cam came through, which was greyscale, blurry, dusty and completely awesome.

A few days later and there is HD video of the landing from parachute to touchdown. This is amazing. My mind is blown. The initial mastcam panorama is incredible as well. High def and crisp.

They even recorded a gust of wind blowing over the rover while it buzzed and whirred. It's not much...but that's what it is like there.

The only thing missing now is the smell... What does Mars smell like? Probably like Broken Hill...

Hope successful

February and the Mars missions are arriving. First is Hope from the UAE.

They've successfully decelerated into orbit and are starting their science. That's cool.

I'll also mention the Chinese mission, which I haven't heard much about at all. I think it's OK. Need to check.

2020 A retrospective.

Dayamn! That was a whole thing...
No. Just...no. Moving on


Anyway, didn't do much. Looked at the moon a few times.
T and I mentioned trying a dark sky night once, but didn't follow through... coz covid.

Betelgeuse didn't blow. It was probably a spurt of dust. I think a cooling cloud of blown off atmosphere is the current best hypothesis.

SpaceX was exciting during the year. Unmanned and manned Dragon missions to the ISS.

At the end of the year a barrage of missions took off for Mars. UAE sent an orbiter, China has a orbiter/lander mission, and NASA is the big one with Mars2020 landing Perseverance and Intrepid.