The six-wheeled robot’s latest data since yesterday’s touch, contains a series of images captured while the “jet pack” of the rover dropped it on the ground.
Less than a day after NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover successfully landed on the surface of Mars, engineers and scientists at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California were hard at work, awaiting the next perseverance of Perseverance. As data gradually enters, transmitted by several spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet, the Perseverance team was relieved to see the Rover’s health reports, which showed that everything seemed to be working as expected.
The excitement added that a high resolution image was taken during the landing of the rover. While NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover was returned a stop-motion film of his descent, Persversance’s cameras are meant to record videos of his touch, and this new still image was taken from the footage still being transferred and processed to Earth.
Unlike previous robbers, the majority of Perseverance’s cameras capture images in color. After landing, two of the Hazard cameras (Hazcams) viewed the front and rear of the robber, showing one of its wheels in the Mars dirt. Perseverance also got a close-up of NASA in the air: NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance. Orbiter, which used a special high-resolution camera to capture the spacecraft sailing in Jezero crater, with its parachute behind. The High Resolution Camera Experiment (HiRISE) camera did the same for Curiosity in 2012. JPL leads the mission of the orbit, while the HiRISE instrument is led by the University of Arizona.
Several pyrotechnic charges are expected to shoot later on Friday and Perseverance’s mast (the ‘head’ of the rover) will be released from where it is stuck on the deck of the rover. The navigation cameras (Navcams), which are used for driving, share space on the mast with two scientific cameras: the zoomable Mastcam-Z and a laser instrument called the SuperCam. The mast is expected to be lifted on Saturday, February 20, after which the Navcams are expected to take panoramic shots of the rover’s deck and its surroundings.
In the coming days, engineers will go through the system data of the Rover, update the software and start testing the various instruments. In the following weeks, Perseverance will test its robotic arm and drive its first, short ride. It will take at least a month or two until Perseverance finds a flat place to unload Ingenuity, the mini-helicopter that is on the belly of the car, and even longer before it finally takes off, its scientific mission begins and search for the first sample of Mars Rock and sediment.
More about the mission
A major objective of Perseverance’s mission to Mars is astrobiology research, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the geology and climate of the planet and be the first mission to collect Mars rock and regolith and place it in the closet, paving the way for human exploration of the Red Planet.
Subsequent NASA missions, in collaboration with ESA (European Space Agency), will send spacecraft to Mars to collect these cast samples from the surface and return to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars reconnaissance approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, is leading the Mars 2020 mission and the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter technology demonstration for NASA.
For more information on perseverance:
mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
nasa.gov/perseverance
News Media Contacts
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
818-393-2433
[email protected]
Alana Johnson / Gray Hautaluoma
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-672-4780 / 202-358-0668
[email protected] / [email protected]