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New images of NASA’s Perseverance rover, along with its parachute, heat shield, and descent stage, were captured by the CaSSIS camera aboard ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) on February 23. 2021.
TGO spotted the Perseverance rover, complete with its parachute and rear hull, heat shield and descent stage, in the Jezero crater area on Mars. Image credit: ESA / Roscosmos / CaSSIS / A. Valantinas.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, which landed in Jezero Crater on Mars on February 18, 2021, will meet high priority science goals for Mars exploration.
Developed as part of NASA’s Mars exploration program, it will look for signs of past microbial life and characterize the climate and geology of the planet.
It will also collect Martian rock and dust samples for a future mission to return samples from Mars to Earth, while paving the way for human exploration of the Red Planet.
Perseverance, the largest and heaviest robotic rover that NASA has built, is based on the configuration of the Curiosity rover.
It is the size of a car, about 3m (10ft) long without the robotic arm, 2.7m (9ft) wide and 2.1m (7ft) high. But at 1,025 kg (2,260 pounds), it weighs less than a compact car.
Its robotic arm is equipped with a rotating turret, which includes a rock drill, scientific instruments, and a camera.
TGO spotted the Perseverance rover in the Jezero crater on Mars. Image credit: ESA / Roscosmos / CaSSIS / P. Grindrod.
The TGO spacecraft provided important data relay services around the Perseverance landing, including supporting the return of videos and images taken by the mission’s on-board cameras as the rover descended to the surface of March.
“TGO will continue to provide data relay support between Earth and Mars for NASA surface missions and for the upcoming ExoMars mission, which will see the European rover Rosalind Franklin and the Kazachok surface platform arrive on the planet. red in 2023, ”said the ESA researchers.
“At the same time, TGO pursues its own scientific mission, focusing on the analysis of the planet’s atmosphere with particular emphasis on the search for gases that may be linked to active geological or biological processes.
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