++FONTS AND LOGO ON-SCREEN FROM SOURCE++

++SOUNDBITES COVERED FROM SOURCE++

++ON SCREEN TEXT++

NASA – MUST CREDIT NASA

Pasadena, California – 22 February 2021

1. Mars surface from Perseverance during descent

2. SOUNDBITE (English) Al Chen, Perseverance entry, descent, and landing lead, Jet Propulsion Laboratory:

"So here we are slowing down and stopping and coming straight down on our eventual landing site here. You can see that as we as we really going to slow down here. You can see the engines as we get lower, throttle up there and and stop us here. And you can see it beginning to push all that dust around on the ground, on the two sides."

3. Mars surface from Perseverance during descent

NASA – MUST CREDIT NASA

++AUDIO COVERED WITH STILLS FROM THE ROVER++

Planet Mars surface – 20 February 2021

4. Audio captured by Perseverance rover

NASA - MUST CREDIT NASA

Planet Mars surface - Date unknown

5. STILLS from Mars

NASA – MUST CREDIT NASA

Pasadena, California – 22 February 2021

6. SOUNDBITE (English) Justin Maki, Perseverance imaging scientist and instrument operations team chief, Jet Propulsion Laboratory:

"The next shows the full panorama from the navcam stitched together. We're still working out the calibration of things. So this is, you know, approximate color. But it just gives you a feel for the vista here that we, our new environment that we're going to explore."

FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4312425

NASA on Monday released a video of a spacecraft landing on Mars, a three-minute trailer showing the enormous orange and white parachute hurtling open and the red dust kicking up as rocket engines lowered the rover to the surface.

The quality was so good and the images so breathtaking that members of the rover team said they felt like they were riding along.

The Perseverance rover landed last Thursday near an ancient river delta in Jezero Crater to search for signs of ancient microscopic life.

After spending the weekend binge-watching the descent and landing video, the team at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, shared the video at a news conference.

Six cameras were devoted to entry, descent and landing, looking up and down from different perspectives. All but one camera worked.

The suite of cameras on the rover and the descent stage provided stunning footage; only one of the five cameras malfunctioned.

The lone microphone turned on for landing didn't work so no audio was collected.

Flight controllers were still thrilled with the thousands of images beamed back _ and also with the remarkably good condition of the rover.

It will spend the next two years exploring the dry river delta and drilling into rocks that may hold evidence of life 3 billion to 4 billion years ago.

The core samples will be set aside for return to Earth in a decade.

NASA added 25 cameras to the spacecraft _ the most ever sent to Mars. Six were devoted to entry, descent and landing, looking up and down from different perspectives. All but one camera worked.

The images will help NASA prepare for astronaut flights to Mars in the decades ahead, according to the engineers.