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From NASA Perseverance rover continues to update on the red planet.
Since Perseverance’s perfect landing on February 18, the rover team methodically checks its seven scientific instruments and various subsystems. For example, Perseverance just deployed its wind sensor, as seen in the before and after photos captured by the six-wheeled robot’s navigation cameras.
The wind sensor is part of Perseverance’s weather station, called Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA). The instrument will monitor air temperature, humidity, radiation, dust and wind at the Perseverance landing site, the bottom of Jezero crater, a 45 km wide hole in the ground housing a deep lake and a river delta in the ancient past.
Live Updates: NASA Mars Perseverance rover mission
Congratulations to the MEDA team! Look at what has just been deployed !! The wind sensor! @estrellasycafe You must be so happy! Find more photos on: https://t.co/MTE3cqSBDd # mars2020 pic.twitter.com/FiGbSTvqYnMarch 1, 2021
Perseverance, at the heart of NASA’s $ 2.7 billion Mars 2020 mission, will search for signs of life inside Jezero and collect and cache samples for future return to Earth. But this main scientific work will not begin immediately after commissioning of the rover; Perseverance’s first big job will be to find an airfield where its little helicopter companion can take off.
This helicopter, a 4-pounder. (1.8 kilograms) craft named Ingenuity, traveled to Mars on the belly of Perseverance. Ingenuity will deploy to the airfield and attempt to perform the very first rotorcraft flights over a world beyond Earth, demonstrating technology that could pave the way for a whole new Mars exploration strategy.
Ingenuity flights will likely take place this spring, with science and sampling work starting in earnest this summer, mission team members said.
But Perseverance’s debut on Mars is far from boring. The rover team has already posted more than 6,300 Jezero photos of the rover, many of which are spectacular high-resolution photos taken with Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z camera system. You can find them here. Good visit!
Mike Wall is the author of “Over there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book on the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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