Last week’s pinpoint touchdown of NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover in Jezero Crater was historic for many reasons, chief among them the epochal nature of the mission’s task of seeking signs of ancient life—and caching relevant samples for eventual return to Earth. But even if the rover finds no evidence of Martian microbes during its operations, it will have still produced another spectacular “first” for the textbooks, which NASA officials unveiled today: An unprecedented look at the “seven minutes of terror” between Perseverance’s fiery plunge through the planet’s skies and its coming to rest on solid ground far below. This is the first ever high-definition video of atmospheric entry, descent and landing on another world.
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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