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The NASA rover on Mars deviated from its landing position two weeks after first reaching the red planet on a first trip that lasted 33 minutes.
The rover advanced four meters, made a 150-degree turn to the left, and then fell back 2.5 meters on its test drive.
“This is really the beginning of our journey here,” said Rich Rieber, the NASA engineer who plotted the route.
“This is going to be like the Odyssey, adventures along the way, hopefully not Cyclops, and I’m sure there will be a lot of stories written about it.”
Flight controllers are still checking Perseverance’s systems and everything is working so far.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to see wheel tracks and I’ve seen a lot of them,” said engineer Anais Zarifian.
The plan is for the rover to collect rocks in an old river delta. But before that, he will launch an experimental helicopter called Ingenuity that he brought with him.
Perseverance is NASA’s largest and most elaborate rover to date and became the ninth American spacecraft to successfully land on Mars on February 18.
Meanwhile, NASA scientists announced Friday that they named the Perseverance landing site after the late science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler, who grew up next to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. .
She was one of the first African-Americans to receive widespread attention for science fiction.
