Millions of people around the planet have seen NASA’s Perseverance Rover descent and touchdown video – I’ve watched it over and over! I tweeted that this landing made me feel like a kid during the Apollo era again! Cameras were not part of the rover’s initial design – and were allowed to be added with the ideas that “they won’t do any harm to the rover, and IF they work, great… you get what you get.” Well what NASA got was a video seen across the globe, and a HUGE positive media boost – not to mention the invaluable engineering data these cameras have provided. Can I just put out there that cameras should be default part of EVERY NASA mission from now on? Look at the Juno mission to Jupiter – the insanely popular citizen-scientist processed images and videos from Juno were obtained from a camera that was not originally part of the mission’s specs, but were added as … Continue reading →