NASA’s Rover Perseverance Celebrates First 12 months on Mars With Some Operating

NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance is celebrating the completion of its one-year keep on the Pink Planet by studying to run on its rocky floor. The roughly 1,025-kg machine has achieved a number of milestones, together with new distance data, since its contact down on the rocky floor a yr in the past on February 18, 2021. And now, it’s attempting to achieve confidence and pace to tackle difficult duties, which embrace accumulating extra rock samples within the coming weeks because it runs in direction of its new science marketing campaign at a brand new vacation spot away from Jezero Crater, which contained a lake billions of years in the past.

Over the previous yr, Perseverance has collected six rock samples to date, served as a base station for the Ingenuity helicopter, and examined the primary prototype oxygen generator MOXIE on Mars, NASA stated. The six-wheeled machine is accumulating rock samples to ship them again to Earth throughout a future crewed mission to the Pink Planet. Scientists would then be capable of examine the samples, primarily in search of indicators of historical life on Mars.

These rock samples will provide insights into the formation of Jezero Crater, stated Thomas Zurbuchen, Affiliate Administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, in a statement. “Each is rigorously thought of for its scientific worth.”

Perseverance just lately set the file for overlaying the best distance (245.76 metre) in a single Martian day, or sol, by any rover on the planet. This milestone was achieved due to its self-driving perform.

However the robotic’s keep on the Pink Planet has not been with out its share of challenges. Whereas transferring rock samples to its storage, Perseverance had choked its methods in December. Nevertheless, NASA engineers had been in a position to take away the obstacle from its stomach and get the rover again to regular functioning.

Perseverance will now acquire two extra samples within the coming weeks from the “Ch’ał” rock kind (named with the Navajo time period for “frog”). If samples of those rocks are returned to Earth, scientists assume they might estimate the age of Jezero and the lake that when resided there.