NASA’s Perseverance rover has successfully landed on Mars.
After over six months of speeding toward the Red Planet at 12,000 miles per hour, the rover gets touched down safely on Mars. The rover landed at approximately 3:56 p.m. EST/12:56 p.m. PST now on Mars’ Jezero Crater.
Perseverance joins four other rovers on Mars: Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity.
Curiosity landed on Mars on August 6, 2012, and for over a year — since the end of Spirit and Opportunity’s mission in 2019 — it has been the only rover on the planet with an active mission. It will continue its mission of determining if Mars ever had the right environmental conditions to support small life forms known as microbes. It will now be joined by Perseverance whose mission is to”address high-priority science targets for Mars exploration, such as key questions about the capacity for life on Mars,” according to NASA.
Perseverance will not only seek signs of habitable conditions for life on Mars, but it will search for signs of”past parasitic life” as well. It is equipped with a special drill that can collect core samples of “the most promising rocks and soils” and set them aside in a cache on Mars for a potential return to Earth in a future mission. The rover’s mission also gives NASA scientists opportunities to gather information about future human expeditions to Mars.
“These [opportunities] contain testing a way of generating oxygen from the Martian air, identifying other resources such as subsurface water, enhancing landing techniques, and characterizing weather, dust, and other potential environmental conditions that could impact future astronauts living and working on Mars,” NASA’s Perseverance mission page reads.
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Associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, Thomas Zurbuchen, said the Perseverance mission shared the scope of the Perseverance’s mission on Mars.
“Perseverance is NASA’s most ambitious Mars rover mission nonetheless, focused scientifically on finding out whether there was any life on Mars in the past,” Zurbuchen said. “To answer this question, the landing group will have its hands full attracted us into the Jezero Crater — even that the hardest Martian terrain targeted for a landing”
The landing team was fortunately successful and Perseverance is now live and getting to work on the Red Planet. Here’s an approximate timeline of how Perseverance’s landing went, according to NASA.
Cruise Stage Separation: NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, which was attached to Perseverance and responsible for flying the rover through space, detached itself at approximately 3:38 p.m. EST..
Atmospheric Entry: Perseverance hit the top of Mars’ air at approximately 3:48 p.m. EST in 12,100 miles per hour/19,500 km per hour.
Peak Heating: The base of Perseverance reach its peak temperatures of 2,370 degrees Fahrenheit/1,300 degrees Celsius, at approximately 3:49 p.m. EST as a result of the friction it endured flying through the air.
Parachute Deployment: Perseverance deployed its parachute in 3:53 p.m. EST..
Heat. Shield Separation: The protective heat shield on the base of Perseverance detached about 20 seconds after its parachute was deployed. This detachment was performed to enable the rover to start using its radar to determine just how far away it is from the face of Mars.
Back Shell Separation: The rear shell of the entry capsule that is attached to Perseverance’s parachute separated by the rover at approximately 3:54 p.m. EST.. Now, the rover began to use rockets to slow down its rate and also fly to the landing site.
Touchdown: Perseverance successfully landed on Mars at approximately 3:56 pm in a rate of about 1.7 miles per hour/2.7 km per hour.
Perseverance was started on July 30, 2020, and landed on Mars on February 18, 2021. It’s expected to stay in the world for one Mars Year, which is the equivalent of 687 Earth days. The first thing that the rover did was send a picture back into NASA on Earth. Additional photographs from a higher-quality camera will be transmitted at a later moment.
Here is the first picture it’s sent:
In the event that you were one of the 10.9 million people who filed your name to Nasa back in March of this past year, your name is now aboard Perseverance and roving around Mars at this time. For more Mars, read about how researchers want to flip the Red Planet green and then check out this story about new ideas researchers have about how Mars might have formed.
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Wesley LeBlanc is an independent news writer and direct manufacturer for IGN. His name is aboard Perseverance and he is so delighted now because distance is your ideal. You can trace him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.
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