tech2 Staff NewsMar 08, 2021 11:03:56 IST
NASA’s latest Perseverance Mars rover is 21 feet, or 6.5 meters, placed on the odometer in its first test run on the Red Planet. The rover went off its landing site in Jezero Crater, two weeks after landing on the red planet in search of signs of life. However, the driver was a maneuver test – one of many milestones that members of the Sustainability team test and calibrate the rover before embarking on any science missions. The drive back and forth lasted just 33 minutes, and went so well that more driving was recorded for Friday and Saturday for the six-wheeled astrobiology robot.
The driver saw Perseverance move forward about 13 feet (4 meters), take a 150-degree left foot, and move 8 feet (2.5 meters) to the rear. The rover team shared images of trails left behind after the drive, over and around small rocks, in a statement.
Perseverance landed right on the edge of what makes a strip of a helicopter come ashore – a nice smooth spot. The action plan for Percy is to drive out of this lying strip, ditch the pan, and then back to catch an Ingenuity test plane. Before the car-sized rover can go to an old river delta to gather rocks to finally return to Earth, he must unleash his protective “belly panel” and unleash the Ingenuity test helicopter.
Taken during the first flight of NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars on March 4, 2021. Image Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
The rover team is debating whether to take the quieter route through a nearby delta, or a potentially harder route with interesting remains from that one-aqueduct on Mars 3 to 4 billion years ago.
On February 26, the eighth Martian (sol) day of a Perseverance rover after landing, mission commanders also completed a software update, replacing the program that helped landing, with a man in charge of exploring the planet. NASA scientists announced Friday that the side where Perseverance toured is named in honor of the late science fiction writer Octavia E Butler. Butler grew up next door to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, and was one of the first African American people to receive mainstream attention for her science fiction work, which included ‘ Bloodchild and Other Stories’ and ‘Parable of the Sower’, etc., According recitation from the space agency.
Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity, is a technology demonstration to test powered aircraft for another world for the first time. He hits a ride on a Perseverance rover. Image credit: NASA
Ingenuity: The first ‘big job’ of a perseverance rover
Perseverance’s first big task is to find an airfield where her buddy can take off a small helicopter, according to her Space.com report. Rulers got a mission the first status report from Ingenuity Mars helicopter attached to the rover’s belly, hours after it landed. Innovation will be tied to the rover for the coming weeks, NASA had said in a statement at the time.
As long as Ingenuity lasts the upcoming frigid Martian nights, where temperatures drop to lows of 90 degrees Celsius, the mission team will proceed with the first flight on another plane in another world. If Ingenuity manages to land successfully and be proactive, NASA can send four fans, “each building on the success of the latter,” the group said.
This descendant of Ingenuity rotorcraft can bring an aerial feature to the study of Mars.
With comments from the Associated Press.
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