The Seven Minutes of Terror

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It took about seven minutes for the spacecraft carrying the rover to go from the top of the martian a phere to landing safely at the bottom. Mars is so far away that any command nassau sent to the spacecraft took several minutes to get there, which meant they just couldn't pilot the spacecraft in real time. It had to land itself, ind a very rough landscape wold navigate that the parachute hav the bo e witen tet ecelerated.

Mars was once a very different planet, with rivers, lakes, and — potentially — life. NASA’s latest Mars rover is on a mission to find traces of past life. What happens if it does?

This is the third episode of our new four-part series, Lost Worlds.

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