The Perseverance rover hit a new milestone this week, making its first test flight on the red planet, NASA announced Friday.
The ventured Mars rover was driving 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) in 33 minutes, the U.S. space agency said.
In total, the six-wheeled astrobiology probe, the size of a car moved 4 meters forward, turned into a place on the left and then up another 2.5 meters to park for a while.
The rover responded “very well,” NASA engineer Anais Zarifian said. “We are now confident that our drive system is good to go, able to take us to where science is leading us over the next two years.”
What now for perseverance?
A few extra short-distance test drives were planned for Friday.
Averaging 200 meters (656 feet) of driving per day is possible once the scientific study begins.
So far, the rover and its hardware, including its main robot arm, appear to be working non-stop, said Robert Hogg, deputy mission manager.
Engineers still have additional equipment checks to run on many of the rover’s instruments before they are ready to take the robot on a more ambitious mission as part of their main mission to find traces of fossil microbial life.
When will the helicopter be used?
Before the rover can go to an ancient river delta to gather rocks to finally return to Earth, he must lower his protective “belly pan” and unleash an experimental helicopter called Ingenuity.
Fortunately, Perseverance landed right on the edge of a potential helicopter landing strip – a nice flat place, according to NASA.
The plan is to drive out of this lying strip, leave the pan behind, and then return for a full-fledged Ingenuity flight.
All this should be completed by the end of spring.
What is the long-term goal?
The rover, weighing about 1,000 kilograms (2,205 pounds) and the size of a small car, crashed on Mars on February 18 after an approximately 480-million-kilometer journey through space.
NASA hopes the project will pave the way for human exploration of the red planet.
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NASA’s Perserverance rover has landed on Mars
New rover for the red planet
NASA’s Perseverance rover (shown in the artist’s photo) is the most exciting rover NASA has ever sent to Mars. Innovation, a technology test, is the first aircraft that attempted to fly under the control of another planet. Persecution rubs down at Mars’ Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021 at around 20:57 UTC with ingenuity tied to its belly.
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NASA’s Perserverance rover has landed on Mars
Everything is prepared
NASA Perseverance Mars rover engineers launched an Atlas V rocket in early July 2020. The rocket departed on July 30 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rover reached orbit around Mars in early February 2021.
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NASA’s Perserverance rover has landed on Mars
Display in clean room
This is how Perseverance looked when it was unveiled to the public in 2019. The rover supports NASA’s Curiosity rover, the latest rover until Perseverance arrived. The new rover weighs just over a tonne – 100 kg (220 pounds) more than before. And at 3 meters (10 ft) long, it is also 10 centimeters longer.
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NASA’s Perserverance rover has landed on Mars
More performance
Perseverance can be loaded with more research instruments and sensors than ever before. And his gripper arm, with its cameras and tools, is stronger too. The rover can collect samples from Mars. There are 23 cameras and many other instruments. One mission is to test whether it is possible to extract oxygen from Martian rock. But, hey, what’s that standing next to the rover on the ground?
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NASA’s Perserverance rover has landed on Mars
Small drone
That’s right! A helicopter is on board. That has never happened on a planetary mission before. The helicopter is completely new to developers. This is the first time they will gain experience and data collection from flying in atmospheric conditions that are different from those on Earth, and in gravity that is about a third of our own.
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NASA’s Perserverance rover has landed on Mars
The robotic giant
Curiosity is the largest and most recent of the Mars rovers currently in use. He landed on August 6, 2012, and has since traveled more than 21 kilometers (13 miles). It’s much more than just a rover. Its official name is “Mars Science Laboratory,” and it is in fact a complete laboratory on wheels.
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NASA’s Perserverance rover has landed on Mars
What is it?
For example, there is a special spectrometer, which is able to study chemical compounds from a distance with the help of a laser; a complete meteorological station capable of measuring temperature, atmospheric pressure, radiation, humidity and wind speed; and most importantly, a chemistry laboratory that can perform detailed analyzes of organic compounds and is always looking for traces of alien life.
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NASA’s Perserverance rover has landed on Mars
Not just scratching the surface
Curiosity has shown that life could theoretically be possible on Mars. But he has not yet found life. The robot arm is equipped with a full-power drill. Here, he takes a sample in “Yellowknife Bay” inside the Gale Crater.
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NASA’s Perserverance rover has landed on Mars
Away to the lab!
Mars dust is processed by a large number of instruments. First, it is sieved and separated into grains of different sizes. These are then sorted and sent to various analytical laboratory devices.
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NASA’s Perserverance rover has landed on Mars
A tiny preview
Curiosity ancestors were much smaller. On July 4, 1997, the small rover Mars Sojourner left its first tension tracks behind in the dust of the red planet. It was the first time a mobile robot was left to its own devices there, equipped with an X-ray spectrometer to perform chemical analyzes and with optical cameras.
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NASA’s Perserverance rover has landed on Mars
Size comparison
Three generations rover. (The little one up is against the Sojourner.) At 10.6 kilograms (23 pounds), it’s not much bigger than a toy car. Maximum speed: 1 centimeter per second. It weighs 185 kilograms – roughly the equivalent of an electric wheelchair. Curiosity is as big as a small car, at 900 kilograms. The larger ones travel up to 4 or 5 centimeters per second.
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NASA’s Perserverance rover has landed on Mars
Almost four months of duty
Sojourner traveled about 100 meters in his lifetime and delivered data and images until September 27, 1997. This is one of the last photographs of him, taken nine days before the radio link broke down. Sojourner may have died because the battery did not last the cold nights.
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NASA’s Perserverance rover has landed on Mars
Paving the way for technology tomorrow
Without Sojourner’s experience, newer rovers would hardly be expected. In 2004, NASA landed two robots of the same model on Mars: Spirit and Opportunity. The spirit lasted for six years, traveling a distance of 7.7 kilometers. The robot climbed mountains, took ground samples and withstood winters and sandstorms. His brother, Cothrom, lost contact on February 13, 2019.
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NASA’s Perserverance rover has landed on Mars
Lots of tools
The 42-kilometer marathon was passed back in 2015, and to this day, it has covered much more ground than curiosity. He can take ground probes with his arm. There are three different spectrometers and even a 3D camera. He last worked in “Perseverance Valley,” a suitable workplace for the strong robot, before being enabled by a sandstorm.
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NASA’s Perserverance rover has landed on Mars
Red planet landforms
This panorama was taken with a Curiosity crane camera. The latest of the rovers will remain in service for as long as possible – hopefully at least another five years. The Martian landscape looks familiar in some way, unlike some deserts here on Earth. Should we get into our wanderlust, then – or would it be better to leave Mars to the robots?
Author: Fabian Schmidt
The rover joins NASA’s InSight lander, which has been on the Martian surface since 2018, and the Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012.
New images of Mars released
At a press conference Friday, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, shared images of the rover’s tracks over and around small rocks.
The trellis left a trail of marks in fertile, sandy Martian soil after its first scratch.
Another image of the surrounding landscape shows rugged terrain with large, dark boulders in the foreground and a high ridge of rocky, distant deposition – marking the edge of the river delta.
mb / rs (AP, dpa, Reuters)
