Six-wheel drive works: Mars Rover performs first test drive

Saturday, March 6, 2021

The six-wheel drive works
Mars Rover conducts first test drive

“Perseverance” will move across the surface of Mars, collecting samples for further experiments. Its first test drive is promising – even if the rover covers only manageable distances.

Mars rover “Perseverance” has successfully completed its first orbit on Mars. According to NASA, the vehicle covered a distance of 6.5 meters two weeks after landing on the Red Planet. – It took 33 minutes. This ride was considered a test of perseverance (roughly “tolerance” in German).

“The rover’s six-wheel drive worked just fine,” said NASA engineer Anees Zarfian. “We now believe that our impetus system is working and that science can take us wherever it takes us in the next two years.” When conducting scientific experiments, the Mars vehicle would have to travel a distance of about 200 meters. The rover’s robot arm test was already successful on Tuesday. This should be used to collect “diligent” rock samples.

The “diligence” of weighing about 1,000 kilograms and the size of a small car touched down 203 days after the flight on February 18 and traveled 472 million kilometers in a dangerous maneuver on a dry lake on Mars. Over the next two years, the rover will explore the lake with a diameter of about 45 km.

The development and construction of the nearly $ 2.5 billion (approximately 2 2.2 billion) vehicle took eight years. Its purpose is to search for traces of previous microbial life on Mars and to study the planet’s climate and geography.