NASA has just published an incredible image of the Perseverance rover about to touch the Martian soil. The rover in question successfully landed on Mars this Thursday (18).
In the photo we see that the rover is attached to cables that are on the Skycrane, a kind of crane with motors that lowered the rover to the ground (See the art below).
“This landing is one of those pivotal moments for NASA, the United States and space exploration globally – when we know we are about to discover and sharpen our pencils, so to speak, to rewrite the textbooks,” said Acting NASA Steve Jurczyk.”
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Perseverance launched in July 2020 and traveled 472 million kilometers between Earth and Mars.
In the coming days, high-resolution images and videos will be sent showing scenes of the landing.
The mission:
The rover aims to search for past microbial life in the floor of the crater, which was once the site of a large lake.
The equipment is actually a geological laboratory, some experiments will be carried out, one of them is the collection of Martian materials that will be kept so that a future mission can fetch such materials and bring them to Earth.
One of several experiments will be the use of MOXE, a device that will try to transform carbon dioxide into oxygen.
"Perseverance's sophisticated science instruments will not only aid in the hunt for fossilized microbial life, but will also expand our knowledge of Martian geology and its past, present and future.", said Ken Farley, project scientist for Mars 2020 at Caltech in Pasadena, Calif.
“Our science team has been busy planning how best to work with what we anticipate will be a cutting-edge data hose. This is the kind of 'problem' we are looking forward to”.
Another novelty at Perseverance is the presence of a mini-helicopter, the Ingenuity, which will be the first drone to fly on another planet.
