In The New York Times article “ How to land on Mars” written by Jonathan Corum,the main idea is about the process of a spacecraft lands on theMars.  It will take six months of traveling in order for a spacecraft to arrive to Mars. After its arrival, there are many steps that the spacecraft needs take in order to avoid the failure of landing. First of all, scientist have to make sure that the timing and the location that they are going to aim is correct, so they can avoid the dust storms on Mars. Then after the spacecraft is ready, it will travel within Mars’ atmosphere at a speed of 12,300 miles/hour.  However, the spacecraft must land with a degree of 12 in order to successfully land on Mars, because if the spacecraft is too steep, it will burn and if it is too shallow, it will just pass through the atmosphere and return the space. While the spacecraft is passing through the atmosphere, the parachute inside the craft will pop out and slows down the landing. Lastly, the legs of the spacecraft will also pop out to make sure that the spacecraft lands. Since the distance between Earth and Mars is really far, it takes 8 minutes and 7 seconds for the communication signal to sent to Earth, so the scientist do not know whether the spacecraft fail or not until they have waited for a long time.  

The diagrams on this article really help me to understand the entire article. I feel like without the diagram, I will not understand what the article is trying to say because I have never see a spacecraft before and I never learn about how a spacecraft will function and the usage of visuals give me an image of what’s going on.  In addition, introducing those images will also prevent me from getting tired of the reading. Also, just by reading those images, you also get figure out the intent of the autor without reading the entire article which is to show the audience about the process of landing on the Mars. Overall, visuals are really helpful in boosting the understand of reader and providing the reader a very brief summary. I would compare the relationship with texts and visuals with a song.  Texts are just like the lyrics of a song, while visuals is like a rhythm. Without any of these, a song will not be complete.