NASA’s Perseverance rover reached Mars last month, the culmination of years of design and development at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). NASA began downloading images from the robot almost immediately after landing, but the team completed a full system scan before bringing the device for spinning. Perseverance took its first trip to Mars late last week, covering a total of 21.3 feet (6.5 meters).
Sustainability is about the size of an understretched car, with a weight of more than 2,000 pounds on Earth. Even on Mars, that’s a giant robot. Like Curiosity, this rover used a rocket-powered spacecraft to execute a soft landing on Mars. NASA wanted to make sure perseverance was in full working order before they drove it anywhere. It also needed a software update, which NASA completed in late February.
With the housework done, NASA pumped the gas on March 4th. It took about 33 minutes for endurance to complete the maneuvers – accuracy is far more important than speed at a distance of 142 million miles (about 230 million kilometers). First, the rover moved forward 13 feet. He then turned in his position 150 degrees before ascending another eight feet. This dance got Stability away from the runway, allowing the team to use their Navigation and Danger Cameras to check out the area where they were dropped by the descent level. This could help engineers better understand the details of a retrorocket return on Mars.
Orbital view of the landing range from ExoMars Gas Trace Orbiter (TGO).
NASA has already used the rover’s artificial arm and run tests on several of its most important instruments such as the Radar Imager for Mars Subsurface Test (RIMFAX) and the In-Situ Mars Oxygen Resource Utilization Test (MOXIE). The team has several more experiments to complete before the rover’s science mission begins in earnest. There are more instruments for calibration, and there are still protective covers to remove them from the sample caching system and Ingenuity helicopter.
This first run is just the beginning – Curiosity sets a record for covering more distances than any other rover, and Perseverance has redesigned wheels to keep it going even longer. Jezero Crater has a lot to see, too. The crater was a river-fed lake billions of years ago, and the delta is still visible. Scientists believe that this area is ideal for finding traces of ancient life, and perseverance has the tools to do just that.
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