NASA is pretty proud of its Perseverance Rover on Mars and that’s understandable.
After all, it was just over two weeks ago that the car-sized rover nailed its landing on the Red Planet to begin a years-long mission looking for signs of ancient life. Perseverance has been busy since the February 18 landing and NASA will show how busy it is today (March 5) in a press conference.
As a chance to learn about Perseverance’s “firsts” on Mars, NASA’s NASA update will begin at 3:30 PM EST (2030 GMT). You will be able to follow it live here and on Space.com’s homepage, with permission from NASA TV, or directly from NASA’s website here. Footage for the teleconference will be broadcast live on NASA’s JPL YouTube stream here.
Related: Where can you find the latest Mars photos from Perseverance?
“Since NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover was touched at Jezero Crater on February 18, mission controllers have made significant progress as they prepare the rover for the unpaved road ahead,” NASA officials wrote in an update.
“Since the landing, NASA’s largest, most sophisticated Mars rover has gone through on every system and subsystem and sent back thousands of images from the Jezero crater,” officials added. “These checks will continue in the coming days and the rover will make its first ride.”
During the past two weeks, Perseverance has picked up its camera frame and turned on electronic eyes that get a beautiful view of the Jezero Crater landing site on the rover. This week, for the first time, the rover bent its robotic arm and began testing its wheels for the upcoming first ride.
The Perseverance nuclear-powered rover is designed to search for any clues that could support Jezero crater in the ancient past. It will also collect Mars stone monsters for a future mission to catch the first helicopter and visit another world – a small drone called Ingenuity – as it continues its mission.
Perseverance’s Mars mission is expected to last about one Mars year, which is 686 days (or nearly two Earth years). It is possible that perseverance can take much longer. NASA’s Curiosity Rover, on which Perseverance’s design is based, landed on Mars in 2012 for its two-year mission and continues to go strong more than eight years later.
Email Tariq Malik at [email protected] or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us on @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Instagram.