NASA Rover “Perseverance” Lands on Mars
Inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the agency’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is encapsulated in the two halves of the United Launch Alliance Atlas V payload fairing on June 18, 2020. The Mars Perseverance rover is scheduled to launch on July 20, 2020, atop the Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The rover is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the Red Planet. The rover’s seven instruments will search for habitable conditions in the ancient past and signs of past microbial life on Mars. The Launch Services Program at Kennedy is responsible for launch management.
NASA’s latest rover Perseverance, launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on July 30th, 2020. From then, it traveled about 293 million miles to Mars, our neighboring planet further from the sun. The rover finally touched down on the surface of Mars on February 18th, 2021. If you are interested in watching the rover land, you can watch it here Perseverance Rover’s Descent and Touchdown on Mars (Official NASA Video).
At the time of writing, Perseverance has been on Mars for 28.67 sols. A sol is a day on Mars which is about 40 minutes longer than a day on earth. We use the word sol to differentiate between a solar day on earth.
What sets the Perseverance rover apart from the others is the new technology onboard. When the rover was sent up to Mars, it was equipped with a small helicopter named Ingenuity. Ingenuity has not yet been deployed from the rover but is set to soon in April.
The big mission Perseverance was sent to do was to search for ancient microbial life, gather rock and soil samples to be collected by another rover that will be sent to mars, but most important of all, it is going to test oxygen production in the atmosphere of Mars.
The Perseverance rover, though not the first and most certainly not the last, is a breakthrough in technology and is paving the way for human exploration on Mars. If you are interested in reading more about the rover or the mission, you can visit NASA’s official site for it at https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/.
