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“Everything seems to be working fine,” said project manager Tim Canham, according to a statement from the US space agency NASA. It is now important to quickly charge the aircraft’s six lithium-ion batteries, which weigh about two kilograms, to keep the electronics warm.
“Wit” (German: wit) is still attached to the bottom of “Perseverance” (staying power). But in 30 to 60 days, the helicopter should explore Mars from a bird’s eye view. It would be the first flight of an airplane over another planet. The “device” will have to withstand extreme conditions: on Mars, it can be as cold as minus 90 degrees Celsius at night.
The “Perseverance” rover, which weighs about 1,000 kilograms and the size of a small car, landed this Thursday – after 203 days of flight and 472 million kilometers – with a risky maneuver in a dry lake called “Jezero Crater”. “Perseverance” is to investigate this lake with a diameter of around 45 kilometers during the next two years.
In the next few days, NASA engineers want to test the rover’s measurement instruments and robotic arm. Then a first short trip should be undertaken. On subsequent tours, the specialists want to find a flat spot on the surface of Mars that is suitable as a starting point for the mini helicopter.
The development and construction of the roughly $ 2.5 billion (about 2.2 billion euros) rover had taken eight years. It is supposed to look for traces of previous microbial life on Mars and investigate the planet’s climate and geology.
