Mars orbits the red planet for the first time

New York (dpa) l Mars rover “Perseverance” has successfully completed its first orbit on Mars. The vehicle covered a distance of 6.5 meters two weeks after landing on the Red Planet – a good 33 minutes on Thursday, according to NASA data on Friday. 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 “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.