Mars: NASA releases first video and audio of rover landing

The Perseverance rover has sent back the first audio clip from the Red Planet, capturing a faint Martian breeze. The longer video shows the remarkable moment the rover touched down on the surface.

US space agency NASA has released a video and the first ever audio clip from Mars, a faint wind sound captured by the Perseverance rover.

Several images of the landing were released earlier, but it took days for the video signal to be relayed to Earth.

The 3 minute 25 second video clip released on Monday shows the last few kilometers of Perseverance's trip.

After the parachute opens during the descent, the spacecraft touches down on the dusty red surface of the planet.

"These are really amazing videos," Michael Watkins, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said at a briefing for reporters. "This is the first time we've ever been able to capture an event like the landing on Mars. We all watched them over the weekend many, many times."

NASA also released several new higher resolution panoramic images during the press conference.

What does Mars sound like?

Though the two onboard microphones weren't turned on during the descent, the rover was able to capture audio once it landed.

The short audio clip may not be spectacular, but it is the first sound recording from another planet.

NASA is building a "Martian playlist," collected on the website, Sounds of Mars.

"Stay tuned," said NASA. "We may soon hear the sounds of another world."

Mission update

The newly-launched rover is operating as expected, said Jessica Samuels, Perseverance's surface mission manager.

"I am happy to report that Perseverance is healthy," she said.

In another mission update, the small helicopter Ingenuity, which was delivered by the rover, sent its first status report to the control center in Pasadena, California. According to NASA, it too appears to be "functioning perfectly."

Still attached to the underside of Perseverance, the helicopter will begin exploring Mars in 30 to 60 days, offering viewers a bird's-eye view of the surface.

It would be the first flight of an air vehicle over another planet.

What's next?

Perseverance's main mission is to search for traces of past microbial life on Mars and study the planet's climate and geology.

The rover itself weighs about 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) and is the size of a small car.

On Thursday it set off on another mission, a risky maneuver to a dried up lake called Jezero Crater. With a diameter of about 45 kilometers (28 miles), Perseverance will explore the crater over the next two years.

mb/rs (AFP, DPA, Reuters)

you have to try everything. And I've always lived by that." (Cologne,

Germany)

"Since I do a lot of sports where, for example, muscle building is one of the main goals, and I pay a lot of attention to meeting my daily macro-needs, eating meat is virtually 'unavoidable.'"( Germany)

"God created animals for us to eat. So for that reason, I don't feel bad." (Africa desk)

Add to that another N, Buttlar says — for "nice." Meat tastes far too good for many people to want to give it up.

After Kai has cut the sheep's throat and after the animal has stopped twitching, he looks up from its lifeless body and out to the surrounding scenery. In Germany alone, 763 million animals were slaughtered in 2019, according to the animal welfare organization The Albert Schweitzer Foundation for Our Contemporaries. Worldwide, that figure is more than 70 billion per year. Kai glances briefly at the camera, asking: "Just so we can eat meat?"

'First World problem'?

Most of these animals are bred and slaughtered in industrialized nations — most often, en masse in factory farms. According to the Meat Atlas, China alone produces about onethird of the global meat supply.

On the African continent, on the other hand, the average per capita consumption of meat is 17 kilograms per year. That's barely one-sixth of the average in Australia and the US.

Does this imbalance have any bearing on the meat paradox?

"When I see meat, I don't even think about my family, let alone the animals. Maybe it's because meat was so expensive (in my homeland) that we were very happy if we got it at all." (Syrian, now living in Germany)

"It's a First World problem." (Africa desk)

"This idea does not apply to us. Tell Westerners who are worried about human and animal life." (Africa desk)

"Dissonance, the psychological process underlying the meat paradox, is assumed to be universal," Buttlar said. Cognitive dissonance is the term used to describe the uncomfortable mental state in which a person holds conflicting beliefs and attitudes.

In this context, for example, it's: I feel sorry for the animal's death and pain, but I still want to eat meat.

Buttlar points to one of the few studies that considered the cross-cultural differences of the meat paradox. Here, researchers found that certain reactions were universal across cultures.

For example, the increased disgust felt as soon as the participants were shown a dead pig with its head still attached. Seeing a dead animal in its entirety made it more difficult for people to detach the meat from its living, breathing origin, and the desire of the participants to eat the pig was reduced.

Kai experienced this firsthand. "As soon as the head was cut off and the sheep was skinned, it was just meat," he said.

However, Buttlar said, these studies suggest that this effect is smaller among people from countries where self-slaughter is more common than among those who mostly eat meat in a processed form, such as in kebabs or chicken nuggets.

The research also suggests that the more relevant the issue is to the person, the more strongly the dissonance is felt, Buttlar said. Not all animals eaten in the world are devalued, but primarily those eaten in one's own culture. For example, it's not uncommon to eat dogs in some countries in the world, where they aren't given the status of pet as in many other nations, just as cows, chickens and pigs are perceived primarily as a food source in many Western nations. This is another indication that the meat paradox does apply across the globe, but that it plays out differently from culture to culture.

The power of norm and habit

In addition to all the psychological reasoning people use to try to cope with the meat paradox, however, there are people who choose not to eat meat, or any animal products at all, in order to live with a clear conscience.

"It's just hypocrisy: If you don't want to kill an animal, why eat it?" (Africa desk)

"I have been eating a vegan diet for three years. I no longer crave meat at all. On the contrary, the meat counter in the supermarket seems like a graveyard to me." (Yemeni, lives in Switzerland) I, too, decided to go vegan a few years ago after 19 years of being vegetarian. For me, it was the simplest strategy to resolve the meat paradox.

Simple? Buttlar disagrees with me.

"Eating meat is the norm in most societies," he said.

If you come from a family full of vegetarians and vegans, like me, making the switch is a lot easier. In Kai's family, however, eating meat is an integral part of life. After a period of abstinence, he returned to steak. Out of habit, probably — he said he didn't know for sure.

In a study led by Buttlar in 2019, he wrote that increasing awareness of the environmental concerns and health risks associated with meat eating were far more likely to result in behavioral change, as opposed to moral arguments.

Nevertheless, slaughtering an animal with his own two hands and seeing it lie at his feet in a pool of blood has stayed with Kai. And it will for a while longer, he suspects. "Death itself is overwhelming," he told me.