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WASHINGTON – NASA’s Perseverance rover began moving on the Martian surface as project scientists prepare to send the rover toward the remains of a river delta in search of signs of past life.
At a press conference on March 5 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, project officials said the rover made its first moves since landing in Jezero crater on February 18. The rover advanced four meters, turned 150 degrees to the left, and then fell back 2.5 meters.
“Our first trip went incredibly well,” said Anais Zarifian, Perseverance Mobility Testbed Engineer, at the briefing. During the trip, the rover took pictures showing the tracks left by its wheels. “I don’t think I was happier to see the wheel tracks.”
That first rover trip is part of the ongoing checks of the rover and its instrument suite. “We have not had any hardware problems. Everything has been working that we have been checking, ”said Robert Hogg, Perseverance’s deputy mission director, at the briefing. “In fact, it has been incredibly smooth.”
While the engineers test the rover’s systems, the scientists plan the rover’s journey to a delta that is a high-priority region for the rover to explore. Katie Stack Morgan, deputy scientist for the Perseverance project, said at the briefing that they have mapped two potential paths from the landing site, which the mission has named Octavia E. Butler Landing after the science fiction author, to the base of the delta. .
“We are in the middle of discussions” with rover planners about the best route and how long it will take to get to the delta, he said. That includes weighing the terrain with the science that can be done along the way – while one route is relatively smooth, it is less scientifically interesting than the other route passes some reservoirs that offer a preview of the delta.
That trip to the delta will take place after Perseverance deploys Ingenuity, the small helicopter attached to the rover’s landing gear, and observes a series of flight tests that Ingenuity conducts scheduled to last 30 days. Hogg said engineers are still looking for a location to conduct those flight tests, using images from the rover.
“We are still looking at various areas to determine the best place to do that,” he said. “We hope to get the whole helicopter thing going before the spring is over.” Once the flight tests are done, the rover will head towards the delta.
Engineers continue to test some of the rover’s systems, including those that will be used to collect samples. Hogg said commissioning of the sample collection system will be completed after helicopter tests.
One of the main objectives of the Mars 2020 mission is to cache the samples for their later return to Earth. With Perseverance safe on the surface, NASA is moving forward with the future mission aspects necessary to return those samples. On March 4, NASA awarded Northrop Grumman a contract worth up to $ 84.5 million to provide propulsion for the rocket, called the Mars Ascent Vehicle, which will carry samples from the surface into the orbit of Mars. That rover will fly to Mars on a landing mission scheduled for launch no earlier than 2026.
“We’ve been thinking about the science team about theoretical samples to collect at Jezero crater for years and thinking about the potential for sample return from Mars,” said Stack Morgan. Now, he said, they can see the actual rocks that they can sample through the rover’s eyes. “We are talking about real rocks now, and that is very exciting for us on the science team.”
“This is one for all ages for JPL and NASA. We’ve been talking about this for decades, ”Hogg said, although it will still be at least a decade before those samples return to Earth. “Although it seems like a long time, it will pass in the blink of an eye.”
