The echo of NASA’s epic touch Perseverance on Mars will extend far beyond the science and aerospace communities, President Joe Biden said.
The Commander-in-Chief held a video call Thursday (March 4) with scientists and engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which manages Perseverance’s $ 2.7 billion mission. During the 10-minute chat, Biden congratulated the team and thanked them for it. from the landing on 18 Februaryand emphasizes that it came at an important time for the country.
“It’s so much bigger than putting perseverance on Mars,” the president told Mike Watkins, director of the JPL. Swati Mohan, leader for mission, navigation and control, leads the call. watch via C-SPAN. “It’s about the American spirit. And you brought it back. You brought it back at a time we so desperately needed. ‘
More: Watch Biden call NASA to celebrate the landing of Perseverance Rover
Related: Perseverance Rover bends its arm for the first time on Mars
Biden then told a short story. A head of state – he did not determine which one – recently told him that the US was just not what it used to be: ” They were so capable of doing great things. And here they can not even get the coronavirus. See how poorly organized they are. “It was said by a head of state,” Biden said.
Perseverance’s dramatic sky-crane landing will help turn around some of the negative impressions, and it will take a toll on democracy in a world where autocracy is going on, he added.
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“There’s a big struggle going on. Your kids are going to study about when democracy re-establishes, that it can do anything, as opposed to autocracies that can only command things,” Biden said. “I just can not tell you how much I believe historians are going to write about what you did at the moment you all did it.”
“You should be so proud of what you did,” he said. “We can land a rover on Mars, we can defeat a pandemic and with science, hope and vision there is not a damn thing we as a country can not do.”
Perseverance is just going on on the floor of the 28-kilometer-wide (45-kilometer) Jezero crater, which housed a deep lake and a river delta billions of years ago. The main tasks of the car size are to look for Jezero rocks for signs of antiquity Mars life and collect samples and place them in the closet for future return to earth, potentially as early as 2031.
In photos: NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover mission to the Red Planet
It seems like Biden is on the verge of achieving these goals. During Thursday’s JPL call, he mentions that he recently hosted a group of the House of Representatives to discuss infrastructure issues. One of the congressmen was impressed by the moon rock in the Oval OfficeSaid Biden, “and I jokingly said, ‘You haven’t seen anything yet. Wait until you see what’s coming from Mars.'”
And Thursday’s call was not Biden’s first celebration of Perseverance’s landing success. For example, he has a congratulations to NASA chief Steve Jurczyk on February 18, shortly after the rover touched down.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.