For the first time in human history, we can watch the moment a rover sets its wheels down on Mars. 

Released today, the astonishing video was filmed as the one-ton Perseverance rover dove toward Jezero Crater on February 18. Until now, scientists and engineers couldn’t watch a Mars landing with their own eyes—they could only read a record of a spacecraft’s movements remotely, in a string of data relayed as it plummeted through the thin Martian atmosphere.

“These are days that I’ve waited years for—it almost doesn’t seem real,” says Adam Nelessen of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who is on the team responsible for the descent imagery. “It looks like it’s straight out of a science fiction movie.”

NASA also