Perseverance, a six-wheeled, SUV-sized vehicle with the most sophisticated robotic astrobiology lab ever launched and an experimental aerial drone aboard, is at the heart of the Mars 2020 mission. It blasted off in July on a 293-million-mile journey. And immediately got to work, taking a photo of its “forever home.”
The rover is starting its mission, exploring an ancient crater lake for signs of past life or in pieces strewn across the Martian landscape.
Hello, world. My first look at my forever home. #CountdownToMarspic.twitter.com/dkM9jE9I6X
Seven minutes of terror
Success depends on a nail-biting “seven minutes of terror” entry, descent and landing, or EDL, sequence that must be completed flawlessly and without intervention from Earth-bound engineers. Because Mars is so far away, it takes 11 minutes for signals to reach NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where the mission is managed. That means that by the time engineers get a message from the s
Nasa’s Mars Perseverance rover has safely landed on the red planet, marking an “amazing accomplishment”, the space agency has announced.
Its mission is to search for signs of ancient life, and explore and collect samples for future return to Earth from diverse environments on Mars.
Perseverance will spend the coming years scouring for signs of ancient microbial life in a mission that will bring back samples from Mars to Earth and prepare the way for future human visitors.
The successful landing of the rover was met with applause and loud cheers across eight rooms as the teams were split up in order to be Covid secure.
While Texas is in the depths of a historic freeze, a major cosmic milestone is cause for celebration. NASA — and Houston's Johnson Space Center &md