The United States made history once again tonight (Thursday), when the Preservers (“Perseverance”) lander landed on Mars. This is one of the boldest robotic maneuvers in NASA’s history, as part of a rather ambitious mission – to test whether there is life on the Red Planet. The spacecraft is NASA’s fifth tool to do so.
This is a rather complex operation, and not only because about half of the missions that have so far tried to land on Mars have crashed. The minutes before the landing have already earned the nickname “Seven Minutes of Horror”, as during them there is a complex sequence of pre-planned events, which must take place at precise times – to make sure the landing is indeed successful. Because of communications limitations in deep space, Earth’s engineers will not be able to track the spacecraft in real time.
The Rover Preservation landed at a one-of-a-kind site called the Djero Crater, about 50 km in diameter. water. Since then, further evidence has accumulated that the crater was once a lake 250 meters deep.
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“Persistence” weighs 899 kg, and includes an arm with five joints and a length of 2.1 meters, an underground radar that will let you know where the most geologically interesting precipitation is below the surface. There are also no less than 23 cameras on the body of the lander. , Including ratang and UV radiation which will allow it to detect biological signatures such as an organic compound in clay.
NASA’s Marsa Perseverance (Photo: REUTERS / Joe Skipper)Next to it will operate a robotic helicopter called the Ingenuity. This is the first aircraft in history to operate outside the Earth. Its main purpose is to prove that aircraft, manned and unmanned, can be used to scan the surface of Mars. It will operate for 30 days, during which it will operate up to five flights of less than three minutes each. It is expected to take off to a height of up to ten meters above the ground.