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The Perseverance rover can travel 200 meters a day, but scientists must perform tests and safety checks before venturing further.
NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover made its first short drive across the surface of the Red Planet, two weeks after the robotic science lab made a perfect landing on the floor of a massive crater, officials said on Friday. the mission.
The Perseverance rover first ventured from its landing position on Thursday, two weeks after landing on the Red Planet to look for signs of past life.
Taking instructions from mission directors at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles, the rover rolled four meters (13.1 feet) forward, turned approximately 150 degrees to its left , then retreated 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) for a total of 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) during its half-hour test in Jezero Crater, site of a ancient lake bed and a long-lost river delta on Mars.
“It went incredibly well,” said Anais Zarifian, JPL mobility test engineer for Perseverance, in a conference call with reporters, calling it a “huge milestone” for the mission.
The roundabout, back and forth only lasted 33 minutes and went so smoothly that the six-wheeled rover hit the road again on Friday.
Perseverance is able to cover an average of 200 meters of driving per day.
The surface of Mars directly below NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover is seen using the Rover Down-Look camera in an image acquired on February 22, 2021 [File: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout via Reuters]
NASA posted a photo taken by the rover showing the wheel tread marks left in the reddish, sandy Martian soil after its first ride.
Another vivid image of the surrounding landscape shows rugged, ruddy terrain littered with large dark boulders in the foreground and a high outcrop of layered rock deposits in the distance – marking the edge of the river delta.
I’m moving! I just did my first test drive on Mars, covering about 5 meters. You look at the very beginning of my wheel tracks. Much more to do. pic.twitter.com/7tFIwWFfJ4
– NASA’s Mars Rover Perseverance (@NASAPersevere) March 5, 2021
So far, Perseverance and its hardware, including its main robotic arm, appear to be working flawlessly, according to Robert Hogg, deputy director of the mission.
But JPL engineers still have additional equipment checks to run on the rover’s many instruments before they are ready to send the robot on a more ambitious journey as part of its primary mission to search for traces of fossilized microbial life. .
The team has yet to conduct post-landing tests of the rover’s sophisticated system for drilling and collecting rock samples for return to Earth via future missions to Mars.
The deck of NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover, featuring the planetary instrument for X-ray lithochemistry, one of the instruments on its folded arm, is seen in an image taken by the rover’s navigation cameras on Mars February 20, 2021 [File: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout via Reuters]
As soon as the system checks on persistence are complete, the rover will head to an old delta in the river to collect rocks for return to Earth in a decade.
Scientists wonder whether to take the smoother route to get to the nearby delta or perhaps a more difficult route with intriguing remnants of that once watery era three to four billion years ago.
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