The first turns of the wheel on Mars to the rover of perseverance

This is a small distance to a motorized vehicle, but it is a big step towards capturing space. NASA’s diligent rover covers a total distance of six and a half meters in 33 minutes to the first orbits of Mars Since landing on February 18th, Announced the US Space Agency on Friday, March 5th.

This was done on Thursday afternoon during the first voyage, and in order to check the proper functioning of the system, the six-wheeled vehicle advanced 4 meters, then made a rotation on the left, approximately 2.5 meters before making the rear maneuver. By backing up, the diligence to be the size of a large SUV enabled NASA to photograph its own wheel tracks on Mars soil.

“I don’t think I was very happy to see the wheel tracks.”Rover’s motion engineer Aeneas Jarifian told a news conference at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory where it was built. “Our first trip went incredibly well, it was a big step towards the mission.”, She enjoyed.

Two hundred meters per day on Tuesday

A slightly longer trip is still planned this Friday, and even on Saturday, if all goes well. This vehicle can travel 200 meters to Mars – slightly longer days than Earth. It travels five times faster than Curiosity, while NASA’s other rover still runs on Mars.

Perseverance descended into the Xero gorge, which scientists believe was the homeland of a deep lake 3.5 billion years ago. The goal of this mission is to collect rock samples that will be brought to Earth through a subsequent mission to search for traces of ancient life on the Red Planet.

Scientists are currently diligently planning to join the delta formed by the flow of an old river in the lake, which is of particular interest to researchers, as sediments may have been deposited there in large quantities.

A historic helicopter flight in anticipation

Before that, the ingenious helicopter, which will become the first motorized craft to fly to another planet, must be released from the bottom of the rover, which will still sit for a moment. NASA teams are currently searching for the best place to perform this historic flight. “By the end of spring”, Friday Robert Hawk, Vice President of Mission.

The rover has already captured more than 7,000 images with its multiple cameras and sent them back to Earth. In one of them, we find a light brown rock in which the first scientific tool Supercam was used, a sophisticated camera, the size of a shoe box, designed in French. It is equipped with a laser that can shoot a rock at a distance of 7 meters to analyze its structure. The results will be released by NASA next week.

Octavia E., an African-American science-fiction writer born in Pasadena, California, where the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is located. The space agency also announced that the diligent landing site was named after Butler.