CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – NASA’s newest Mars rover hit the dusty red road this week and put 21 feet on the odometer on its first test drive.
The Perseverance rover ventured from its landing position on Thursday, two weeks after landing on the red planet to look for signs of a past life.
The roundabout, driving back and forth took only 33 minutes and went so well that there was more driving for the six-wheeled rover on Friday and Saturday.
“This really is the beginning of our journey here,” said Rich Rieber, the NASA engineer who plotted the route. “This is going to be like the Odyssey, adventures along the way, hopefully no Cyclops, and I’m sure plenty of stories will be written about it.”
In his first ride, Perseverance advanced 4 meters, took a 150-degree turn to the left, then backed 8 feet. At a press conference Friday, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, shared photos of its tracks over and around small rocks.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to see wheel tracks and I’ve seen many,” said engineer Anais Zarifian.
Flight controllers still monitor all of Perseverance’s systems. So far everything looks fine. For example, the rover’s 2-meter long robotic arm flexed its muscles for the first time on Tuesday.
Before the car-sized rover can head to an ancient river delta to collect rocks for eventual return to Earth, it must drop its so-called protective “belly pan” and release an experimental helicopter called Ingenuity.
It turns out that Perseverance landed right on the edge of a potential helicopter runway – a nice, flat spot, Rieber said. So the plan is to drive out of this runway, dump the pan and then return for Ingenuity’s highly anticipated test flight. All of this should be accomplished by late spring.
Scientists debate whether to take the smoother route to get to the nearby delta or a potentially more difficult road with intriguing relics from that once-watery time 3 billion to 4 billion years ago.
Perseverance – NASA’s largest and most comprehensive rover to date – became the ninth US spacecraft to land successfully on Mars on Feb. 18. China hopes to land its smaller rover – currently orbiting the red planet – in a few more months.
NASA scientists, meanwhile, announced Friday that they have named Perseverance’s touchdown site in honor of late science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler, who grew up alongside JPL in Pasadena. She was one of the first African Americans to gain mainstream attention for science fiction. Her works include “Bloodchild and Other Stories” and “Parable of the Sower.”
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