NASA’s Perseverance Rover Scooted Around on Mars for the First Time

Fortitude, the car-shaped rover NASA landed on Mars last month, has taken its first spin on the rocky surface of the Jazero crater, NASA announced today. The six wheels of the rover traveled about 21 feet to conduct a critical mobility test on Thursday, as engineers heading back to Earth prepare to meet the mission’s core science objectives.

The Rover’s six aluminum wheels left the tracks on Martian dirt – as captured by one of its on-board cameras – after driving up to 13 feet straight, then circling up to 8 feet. Anees Zarifian, Perseverance’s mobility test engineer, told reporters that it went “incredibly well” and performed better than it did during pre-launch tests on Earth.

Image: NASA / JPL

“I don’t think I’ve ever been happy to see wheel tracks and I’ve seen a lot of them,” she says. “This is a huge milestone for the mission and mobility team. We have stepped on Earth, but driving on Mars is really the ultimate goal. “

Although small and slow, the drive demonstration convinced engineers that NASA’s $ 2.4 billion rover would spend the next two years analyzing the rocks and scooping up about 656 iconic Martian soil samples for future return missions. Are ready to travel to Ft. “It was so amazing to watch last night. We are really happy about it, ”says Robert Hogg, Perseverance Deputy Mission Manager.

Like its sister Rover Curiosity, the Perseverance has a top speed of 0.1 mph, “not so fast,” says Zerifian. It uses a “bogie” suspension system that can climb rocks as large as about 20 inches in diameter while maintaining the level of its main body.

But unloading a wheeled robot on Mars is not about speed. “With a better computer to avoid obstacles and sand pits,” says Zarifian, “we’ll have less time to plan and drive and more time for science. “

Image: NASA / JPL

Since landing on 18 February, Perseverance has returned thousands of images of most of its 19 on-board cameras, including a frame released on Friday, showing the delta of the Jazero, A target site For the rover to drive in the near future. Scientists say the elevated terrain, which is surrounded by an obstacle course of rocks and sand pits, is a junction between an ancient dry-out river and the lake that Jjero used to be 3.5 billion years ago.

Mission teams at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California have designed different avenues for the Fortitude trek to the Delta, aiming to sit on one in the coming weeks as the “most efficient, safest, and most scientific form” Is interesting “, says Katie Stack Morgan, of the mission. Deputy Project Scientist.

NASA released First High-Resolution Panorama of Perseverance This week was captured by the Rover’s Mastcam-Z camera. The 79 images of the mosaic were taken on the Martian afternoon of February 22, and a YouTube user edited it into a 4K video that slowly reached the horizon of the Gizero.

“The rocks seen in the new images of Persons were likely to have been deposited by rivers flowing into the ancient Lake Jjero,” says Morgan.

A seven-month trek from Florida to the Red Planet was started last summer, exploiting a two-month window when Earth and Mars closely align in their orbits around the Sun once every two years. At 293 million miles, it survived a blazing explosion last month, plunged through the Martian atmosphere for seven months and made a highly complex landing in the Jagero crater, a dry lake bed that scientists hope There may be signs of microorganisms from billions. Many years ago.

Rover’s mission team memorializes rover’s landing site in Jjero Octavia E. In the name of butlerLate science fiction writer and the first black woman to win the Hugo Award and Nebula Award.