The latest data the six-wheeled robot made since landing yesterday includes a series of images captured as the rover’s “jetpack” lowered it to 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 Perseverance’s next broadcasts. As data gradually came in, relayed by several spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet, the Perseverance team was relieved to see the rover’s health reports, which showed that everything appeared to be working as expected.
Adding to the excitement was a high-resolution image captured during the rover’s landing. While NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover sent back a stop-motion film of his origins, Perseverance’s cameras are intended to capture video of the landing, and this new still image is made from those images, which are still being sent to Earth and processed.
Unlike previous rovers, most Perseverance cameras capture color images. After landing, two of the Hazard Cameras (Hazcams) captured images of the front and rear of the rover, showing one of its wheels in the Martian dirt. Perseverance also got a close-up of NASA’s eye in the sky: NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance. Orbiter, which used a special high-resolution camera to capture the spacecraft entering the Jezero Crater, with its parachute on the back. The High Resolution Camera Experiment (HiRISE) camera did the same for Curiosity in 2012. JPL is leading the orbiter’s mission, while the HiRISE instrument is led by the University of Arizona.
Several pyrotechnic charges are expected to be fired later on Friday, releasing Perseverance’s mast (the “head” of the rover) from where it is mounted on the rover’s deck. The navigation cameras (Navcams), used for driving, share space on the mast with two science cameras: the zoomable Mastcam-Z and a laser instrument called SuperCam. The mast will be lifted on Saturday, February 20, after which the Navcams are expected to take panoramas of the rover’s deck and its surroundings.
Over the next few days, engineers will delve into the rover’s system data, update the software, and begin testing the various instruments. In the coming weeks, Perseverance will be testing its robotic arm and taking its first short ride. It will take at least one or two months for Perseverance to find a flat location to drop off Ingenuity, the mini-helicopter attached to the rover’s belly, and even longer before finally hitting the road, starting his scientific mission, and taking off. searches for its first sample of Martian rock and sediment.
More about the mission
A primary goal for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology research, including looking for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize past geology and climate and will be the first mission to collect and store Martian rock and regolith, 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 cached samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, including 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 managing the Mars 2020 Perseverance mission and the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter technology demonstration for NASA.
For more 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 Tombstone
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-672-4780 / 202-358-0668
[email protected] / [email protected]