WASHINGTON: After seven months in space, NASA’s Perseverance rover overcame a tense level of tension with a series of successfully executed moves to slowly descend into Martian soil Thursday and begin its mission to mark signs of a past life. to find past.
“Touchdown confirmed,” said an activity led by Swati Mohan at 3:55 pm Eastern Time (2055 GMT), when mission control at NASA’s Jet Deployment Laboratory in Pasadena exploded in good spirits.
The automatically controlled approach was completed more than 11 minutes earlier, the time it took for radio signals to return to Earth.
Shortly after landing, the rover restored its first black-and-white images, revealing a rocky field at the landing site in Crazer Jezero, just north of the equator of the Red Planet .
More images, a video of the descent and possibly the first ever recorded sounds of Mars with microphones are expected in the coming hours as the rover sends data to satellites above them .
US President Joe Biden described the event as “historic”.
“Today has proved once again, with the power of American science and innovation, that there is nothing more than potential,” he tweeted.
Perseverance’s main mission lasts a little over two years but is likely to last much longer, with Curiosity’s predecessor still operating eight years after landing on the planet, the action administrator said NASA’s Steve Jurczyk.
“It will be on Mars for the rest of its life,” he said, adding that “these robots tend to be very reliable.”
Over the coming years, Perseverance will seek to collect 30 rock and earth samples in seal tubs, so that they can be returned to Earth sometime in the 2030s for laboratory analysis.
Approximately the size of an SUV, the craft weighs a ton, is equipped with a seven-foot (two-meter-long) robotic arm, has 19 cameras, two microphones and a series of advanced instruments to assist the his scientific aims.
Before he could get out of his lofty quest, he first had to get past the sad “seven minutes of horror” – the dangerous entry level, rescue and landing that is near. destroy half of the missions to Mars.
The Sustainability-carrying spacecraft was manned into the Martian atmosphere at 20,000 kilometers per hour, protected by its heat shield, then using a Little League-sized supersonic parachute, before he fired on an eight-engine jetpack.
Eventually, he carefully lowered the rover to the ground on a set of cables.
Allen Chen, chief engineer for the platform, said a new navigation system called “Terrain Relative Navigation,” which uses a special camera to identify surface features and compare them to an on-board map, was essential for landing in a rugged area of scientific interest. .
“We’re in a nice flat place, the vehicle is only about 1.2 degrees,” he said. “We have successfully acquired that car park, and we have a safe movement on the ground.”
Scientists believe the crater was home to a river that flowed into a deep lake, depositing sediment in a fan-shaped delta.
Persecution ended about two kilometers (miles) southeast of the delta, said NASA scientist Ken Farley, in an area of geological importance.
Mars has been warmer and wetter in the past, and while previous research has shown that it was possible for space on the planet, it is incumbent on perseverance to determine whether humans inhabited it.
He will begin drilling the first samples in the summer, and along the way will install new instruments for scanning for organic matter, mapping chemical production and laser zap rocks to study the smoke.
Despite the rover’s state-of-the-art technology, taking samples back to Earth remains critical because of the expectations expected in the samples it records.
For example, fossils derived from ancient microbes may look suspiciously similar to patterns caused by precipitation.
Before reaching its main mission, NASA wants to run a number of attractive experiments.
Inside the belly of Perseverance is a small helicopter drone that will attempt its first powered flight on another planet in a few weeks.
Shadow ingenuity, it must achieve a lift in an atmosphere that is one percent the density of the Earth, a demonstration of a concept that could transform the way humans study other planets.
Another test involves an instrument that can convert oxygen from Mars’ carbon dioxide atmosphere, similar to a plant.
The idea is that eventually people will not have to carry their own oxygen on future voyages, which is essential for rocket fuel as well as respiration.
The rover is the fifth ever to put its wheels down on Mars. The feat was first performed in 1997, and all of them have been American.
The US is also finally preparing for a human journey to the planet, although planning is still in its infancy.
“Perhaps by the middle to the end of the 2030s we can start pushing out of the Earth-Moon system and landing astronauts on Mars,” Jurczyk said.