NASA’s Mars wanderer Perseverance has taken its first, short drive on the surface of the red planet, fourteen days after the robot science lab’s truly amazing score on the floor of a gigantic crater, mission managers said on Friday.
The Perseverance wanderer originally wandered from its arrival position Thursday, fourteen days subsequent to arriving on the Red Planet to look for indications of previous existence.
Taking directions from mission managers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) close to Los Angeles, the wanderer moved four meters (13.1 feet) forward, turned around 150 degrees to one side and afterward drove in reverse another 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) for a sum of 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) during its half-hour test within Jezero Crater, site of an old, since quite a while ago evaporated lake bed and stream delta on Mars.
“It went incredibly well,” Anais Zarifian, a JPL mobility test engineer for Perseverance, said during a teleconference briefing with reporters, calling it a “huge milestone” for the mission.
The roundabout, back and forth drive kept going only 33 minutes and went so well that the six-wheeled wanderer was back progressing Friday.
Persistence is equipped for averaging 200 meters of driving a day.
NASA showed a photograph taken by the meanderer showing the wheel track checks left in the reddish, sandy Martian soil after its first drive.
Another clear picture of the encompassing landscape shows a rough, bronzed territory covered with enormous, dark boulders in the foreground and a tall outcropping of rocky, layered deposits in the distance – denoting the edge of the river delta.
Up until this point, Perseverance and its hardware, including its main robot arm, appear to be operating flawlessly, as per Robert Hogg, agent mission manager.
Be that as it may, JPL designs actually have extra hardware checks to run on the meanderer’s numerous instruments before they will be prepared to send the robot on a more goal-oriented excursion as a feature of its essential mission to look for hints of fossilized microbial life.
The group still can’t seem to lead post-landing trial of the meanderer’s sophisticated system to penetrate and gather rock tests for get back to Earth through future Mars missions.
When the system minds Perseverance are finished, the wanderer will set out toward an antiquated stream delta to gather rocks for get back to Earth 10 years from now.
Researchers are discussing whether to take the smoother route to get to the close by delta or a perhaps harder path with charming remainders from that once-watery time three to four billion years prior.
