[ad_1]
Even though NASA Mars Ingenuity Helicopter has captured the imagination flight after flight on the Red Planet, the helicopter rover companion has worked hard to do science, and NASA is ready to share the results.
the Perseverance rover is a robotic geologist and astrobiologist designed to help scientists search for traces of ancient life in the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater, which likely contained a large lake billions of years ago. Since disembarkation in February, the rover tested the technology and the instruments and took its bearings on the bottom of the crater.
Now, NASA is ready to share the first update on the science of Perseverance at a press conference, which you can watch here at 1:00 p.m. EDT (5:00 p.m. GMT) on NASA TV and Space.com. The press conference will include a host of NASA staff, including the associate administrator for science, the project leader and scientist of the Perseverance project, and members of the teams that plan the rover’s movements and investigations. scientists, according to a agency statement.
Related: New photos from 9th Mars Ingenuity helicopter flight help refine science goals for Perseverance rover
In a separate declaration, rover engineers said Perseverance is ready to start looking for signs of ancient life on Mars. The rover has tested numerous instruments that it will use to investigate the rocks around Jezero Crater for signs of ancient life.
Among these instruments are those of Perseverance’s 7-foot (2-meter) robotic arm, which includes an x-ray geology tool that has worked particularly well so far, according to one. NASA exit.
“We got our best compositional analysis of Martian dust even before examining the rock, ”said Abigail Allwood, a geologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, of the instrument she is a principal investigator for, called the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry or PIXL.
All the tools on the rover’s arm are designed to reveal the rocks and dust of Jezero Crater up close, a crater that was once a vast lake that has long since dried up.
“If life was there in Jezero Crater, proof of that life could be there,” Allwood added.
Another instrument, called Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and Engineering or WATSON, also provided particularly valuable initial results, according to the release. WATSON specializes in capturing up close rock photographs that help scientists understand how samples formed based on factors such as color, grain size and texture.
In addition to its own examinations, the Perseverance rover will also be responsible for collecting and storing rock samples that a future mission will bear on Earth for examination in laboratories much more sophisticated than those which can never be sent to Mars.
Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
[ad_2]
Source link