WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden on Thursday congratulated the NASA team responsible for the successful landing of a six-wheeled robber on Mars last year and gave the country a “dose of confidence” at a time when the country’s reputation as scientific leader has been shattered by the coronavirus pandemic.
During a video conference call with the leadership of the space agency’s jet propulsion laboratory team, Biden expressed awe at the landing of Perseverance on 18 February.
Perseverance, the largest and most advanced rover ever sent by NASA, became the ninth spacecraft since the 1970s to successfully land on Mars and travel some 300 million miles in nearly seven months, as part of an ongoing effort to study whether the planet was ever alive again.
“It’s so much bigger than landing perseverance on Mars,” Biden told NASA team members. “It’s about the American spirit. And you brought it back ”
Biden watched on television how Perseverance touched Mars last month and called NASA’s acting administrator Steve Jurczyk to convey his congratulations to the Perseverance team. But Biden has said he wants to speak directly to the team, which he says not only deserves astronomical performance but should also boost the United States’ reputation in an instant.
He recalled that a leader from another country recently told him that the US, which was once competent, had seen the situation with its response to the coronavirus pandemic.
But Biden, who created a pandemic that killed nearly 520,000 Americans, was his top priority, saying the Mars landing would provide the country with some inspiration at a time when it is in dire need.
“We can land a rover on Mars, we can defeat a pandemic,” Biden said. “And with science, hope and vision, there is nothing we as a country can not do.”
The landing of perseverance comes amid a recent crazy streak to Mars under competing space programs.
The NASA team that landed on February 18 was the third visit to Mars in just over a week. Two spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates and China swung in orbit around Mars in consecutive days earlier in February. All three missions began in July to take advantage of the narrow alignment of Earth and Mars.
NASA’s motor-sized, plutonium-powered vehicle arrived at the Jezero crater and hit NASA’s smallest and most difficult target: a 5 to 4 mile strip on an old river delta full of pits, cliffs and rocks. Scientists believe that if life had ever flourished on Mars, it would have happened three to four billion years ago, when water was still flowing on the planet.
Over the next two years, the rover, nicknamed Percy, will use its 7-meter arm (2 meters) to drill and collect rock samples that contain possible signs of past microscopic life.
Three to four dozen chalk-sized specimens are sealed in tubes and set aside to eventually be picked up by another robber and brought home by another rocket.