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NASA braces for ‘7 minutes of terror’ as rover, rocket crane near Mars
NASA’s most ambitious – and difficult – Mars rover mission to date is nearly at the end of its interplanetary journey, but it is just the beginning of the excitement. On Tuesday (Feb. 16) engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) confirmed that Perseverance is doing well and is prepared to attempt a touchdown at about 12:55 p.m. PST (3:55 p.m. EST) on Thursday (Feb. 18).
NASA’s fifth Mars rover, Perseverance, will attempt a tried and true, but terrifying landing method to reach the Martain surface safely. In a process called entry, descent, and landing (EDL) the rover will burst through the Martian atmosphere at 12,500mph (20,000 kph) and slow to just under 2mph (3kph) in about seven minutes – a process which has earned the nickname “seven minutes of terror.”
From interplanetary spacecraft to Martian rover in seven minutes
For the past seven months, Perseverance has traveled 300 million miles (480 million kilometers) as an interplanetary spacecraft. When it reaches its final destination of Mars on Feb. 18, the spacecraft will have to shed some layers to prepare to land on the Martian surface. Perhaps the most challenging part of the seven minutes of terror is that Perseverance will conduct every aspect autonomously – engineers back on Earth will not be able to intervene due to the communications time delay caused by the distance between Earth and Mars.
During the first stage of landing known as entry, Perseverance will slam into the relatively thin Martian atmosphere at the neck-break speed of 12,500mph (20,000 kph). At approximately 12:38 p.m. PST (3:38 p.m. EST), 10 minutes prior to entering the Martian atmosphere, the Cruise Stage which has reliably propelled Perseverance on its journey from Earth via solar power will separate. This will initiate the official transition from spacecraft into rover.
To protect the rover and its critical hardware Perseverance is housed inside of a protective covering – called an aeroshell – and is outfitted with a robust heat shield. Small thrusters at the crown of the aeroshell help to reorient itself and ensure that the heat shield is facing in the right direction as it enters the atmosphere. The aeroshell and heatshield will absorb and deflect the brunt of the heat energy – reaching about 2,370 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1,300 degrees Celsius) – caused by the friction of entering the Martian atmosphere at such a high velocity.
Once through peak heating and deceleration, Perseverance will utilize a new technology called Range Trigger to determine its exact location and distance to the surface. The spacecraft will utilize this technology to autonomously determine the optimal time to deploy its supersonic parachute – the largest ever sent to Mars – and separate its heat shield. This is expected to occur at 12:52 p.m. PST (3:52 p.m. EST). Once the heat shield has separated the powered descent stage – and the Perseverance rover itself – will be exposed to the Martian environment.
Although a similar descent method has been used in the past with the landing of NASA’s Curiosity rover in 2012, Perseverance’s way of doing things has received a major upgrade.
Once the heat shield has been dispersed, Perseverance will use a radar and cameras to utilize a new landing technology called Terrain-Relative Navigation. Essentially, Perseverance will continuously take images to map out the Martian surface as it descends to determine its exact location. The spacecraft will actively decide and target the best possible safe landing site which can be autonomously changed up to 2,000 feet (600 meters). Then the aeroshell and parachute are jettisoned and it’s the powered descent module’s time to shine.
Using rockets to land, rather than to launch
Just two minutes after ditching the heat shield, at 12:54 p.m. PST (3:54 p.m. EST) and only 1.3 miles (2.1 kilometers) above the surface, the powered descent stage will fire eight throttleable retrorockets to slow the spacecraft’s descent even more and steer it to its chosen landing target. During the powered descent phase, the spacecraft will slow from about 190 mph (306 kph) to just 1.7 mph (2.7 kph).
Once the spacecraft determines that it is 65 feet (20 meters) from the surface by utilizing the Terrain-Relative Navigation, the powered descent stage will initiate the sky crane maneuver. In this phase, the Perseverance rover will be delicately lowered to the Martian surface with a system of Nylon cords.
At 12:55 p.m. PST (3:55 p.m. EST) the $2.4 billion NASA Mars 2020 mission will officially touchdown on the surface of Mars in the Jezero Crater. Once safely down, the sky crane will severe the cords and fly off for a crash landing at a safe distance away from the rover.
During the landing attempt, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will be overhead and constantly sending telemetry back to Earth via NASA’s Deep Space Network. The telemetry will indicate to engineers back at NASA JPL if the landing procedure was successful and will confirm a touchdown at 12:55 p.m. PST (3:55 p.m. EST).
This will be the first time that a NASA Mars rover will be landing with its eyes open, so to speak. NASA hopes that the first images – and sounds – of the Martian landing will be available to release to the public within about an hour of confirmed touchdown.
Beginning around 11:15 am PST (19:15 UTC) on Thursday, February 18th, NASA will provide live coverage of Perseverance’s landing attempt. The agency will carry the coverage on NASA TV and its website, as well as a number of other platforms including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitch, Daily Motion, Theta.TV, and the NASA app. You can view the entry, descent, and landing process in its entirety in the video below provided by NASA’s JPL.
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Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) beat Wall Street expectations of 406,000 vehicles delivered in Q2 by reporting 480,126 deliveries for the three months ending in June.
Tesla reported it delivered 467,762 Model 3 and Model Y units, while 12,364 Model S, Model X, and Cybertrucks switched hands during the quarter. The Model S and Model X were officially sunset this past quarter and will no longer be part of the company’s Production & Delivery reports moving forward.
🚨 BREAKING: Tesla delivered 480,126 vehicles in Q2, ANNIHILATING Wall Street expectations of 406,000. Production was reported at 451,758.
Deliveries:
Model 3/Y: 467,762
Other Models: 12,364Production:
Model 3/Y: 442,936
Other Models: 8,822 https://t.co/TTHwQAsKt8 pic.twitter.com/7qI4Zj6FE5— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 2, 2026
The quarter is a pleasant surprise and a good rebound from Q1, when Tesla slightly missed the Wall Street consensus of 365,645 cars by reporting 358,023 deliveries for the first three motnhs of the year.
Energy storage deployments also provided some strength in Tesla’s delivery report, hitting 13.5 GWh for Q2. This is a particular division of Tesla’s business that has been overwhelmingly robust over the past few years, truly being a strong point of the company’s overall model.
For the year, Tesla analysts still predict deliveries to trend in the 1.69 million unit region, a modest 3 to 5 percent increase from the 1.64 million cars the company delivered last year. Tesla will likely return to more sequential and noticeable year-over-year growth as the Cybercab project starts to ramp up considerably in the next few years.
Tesla has some other potential catalysts to spur vehicle deliveries, too. Not only is it expecting Cybercab to truly start making a change in the next few years, but other vehicles could be entering the company’s lineup.
Tesla sends production Cybercab with no steering wheel, pedals to on-road testing
The slightly longer Model Y L has been a highly speculated release candidate in the U.S. It has already done incredibly well in China, and U.S. buyers have been wanting slightly more interior space than the Model Y. Now that the Model X is gone, it is more needed than ever.
Q2 highlights a pretty stable automotive division within Tesla, and no true concerns arise from these figures, especially considering it managed to beat expectations convincingly.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted a photo of himself standing with the Optimus production team inside Tesla’s Fremont factory, arms crossed amid workers in hard hats and safety vests. The image captures a pivotal industrial shift: the same facility space once dedicated to building Tesla’s flagship Model S sedan and Model X SUV is now home to the company’s humanoid robot manufacturing line.
Walking the Optimus production line in Fremont pic.twitter.com/ABS0tuRibW
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2026
Tesla’s Fremont Factory, acquired in 2010 from the former NUMMI joint venture between Toyota and GM, has been the company’s original U.S. manufacturing hub since Model S production began in 2012.
The Model X followed soon thereafter. These premium vehicles offered lower annual volumes, recently around 30,000 combined, compared to the high-volume Model 3 and Model Y lines that continue around the site. Over their combined run, the S and X accounted for roughly 610,000 units.
In late January 2026, during Tesla’s Q4 2025 earnings call, Elon Musk announced the end of Model S and Model X production in Q2 2026. The final vehicles rolled off the line in early May. Rather than retooling for another vehicle, Tesla chose to convert the dedicated S/X assembly area into a dedicated Optimus Gen 3 production line.
Model 3 and Y manufacturing remains unaffected. Tesla’s official Fremont Factory page now lists Optimus alongside the 3 and Y as core products.
The conversion was executed with remarkable speed. After production stopped, crews dismantled the existing vehicle line and installed entirely new modular equipment—including lines sourced from Germany and dozens of sub-lines for actuators, batteries, and other components—in roughly four months.
Musk described the timeline as “insanely fast,” noting it would be unprecedented for any other manufacturer. Initial Optimus output is expected to ramp slowly due to the robot’s roughly 10,000 unique parts and the brand-new production processes involved. The Fremont line targets an eventual capacity of 1 million Optimus units per year.
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
Optimus Development Timeline
- August 19, 2021: Optimus (then called Tesla Bot) formally announced at Tesla’s first AI Day. A concept video showed a person in a suit demonstrating the vision for a general-purpose humanoid capable of dangerous, repetitive, or boring tasks using the same AI architecture as Full Self-Driving.
- 2022: Early prototypes displayed. At the second AI Day in September, semi-functional units demonstrated walking across a stage and basic arm movements
- 2023: September videos showed improved capabilities, including sorting colored blocks, precise limb awareness, and holding a Yoda pose.
- 2024-early 2025: Factory integration videos showed Optimus navigating workspaces and handling objects like battery cells.
- January 2026: Gen 3 mass-production activities began at Fremont, with reports of over 1,000 Gen 3 units already operating inside the factory for real-world learning and AI training
- April 2026: Musk confirms Optimus production on converted Fremont line would begin in late July or August 2026. The Gen 3 reveal, originally eyed for Q1, was pushed closer to production start. A second, much larger Optimus factory at Giga Texas is under construction, with volume production targeted for Summer 2027 and long-term capacity of 10 million units annually
- July 1, 2026: Musk’s on-site visit and team photo confirm the Optimus line is operational and the transition is actively progressing
Tesla positions Optimus as potentially its largest project ever, leveraging vertical integration, AI expertise, and car-like manufacturing know-how to scale humanoid robots first for its own factories and later for broader industrial and consumer use.
The Fremont conversion serves as a critical proving ground for this ambitious new chapter in Tesla’s already-rich history.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
Tesla short seller Michael Burry, the subject of the film “The Big Short,” where he was portrayed by Steve Carell, has revealed he has opened a new bet against the stock.
In a new update to his Substack newsletter in a post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” Burry revealed a new set of bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, NVIDIA, Applied Materials Inc., and the iShares Semiconductor ETF.
In regard to Tesla, Burry wrote:
“And finally I shorted Tesla at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.”
This means Burry likely opened his new short position after the company’s recent rally on Wall Street, which saw Tesla shares sink in mid-May, only to recover to well over the $400 mark. Currently, shares trade at around $427.
The company saw a big Tuesday as shares climbed considerably, over 10 percent. The size of the Tesla short was not provided, nor did Burry give any information on the position’s structure, the number of shares, dollar value, or whether options were used in the short.
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
Over the years, Burry has been one of the more vocal critics of Tesla, calling its share price “media inflated,” and saying it was “ridiculously overvalued” as recently as December.
The company has largely transitioned away from being known as an automotive company and instead is much more widely regarded as an AI play, mostly due to its Full Self-Driving efforts, Optimus robot development, and data collection related to both.
This has not pulled those skeptics away from being vocal about their distaste for how Tesla is valued, but there’s no denying that the company is a global force in many things, including sustainable energy, automotive, and AI.
Tesla annihilates Wall Street expectations with strong Q2 delivery showing
Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress
