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What is NASA’s Perseverance Rover?
The Perseverance rover is a robotic scientist weighing around 1,025 kg to explore Mars. The rover is equipped to fulfill its mission of searching for signs of past microbial life, characterizing the planet’s climate and geology, collecting samples for the future return to Earth, and paving the way for human exploration of the Red Planet.
The NASA blog post notes that the Perseverance rover is balanced, which means that measurements of precision mass properties are essential for a safe landing on Mars. They help ensure that the spacecraft travels accurately during its journey to the Red Planet. This includes from its takeoff, to its entry, descent and landing on the Red Planet.
NASA notes that the Mars 2020 mission carried by the Perseverance rover will take off any day between July 17 and August 5. Once taken off, the rover will land in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021, on Mars. The Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission itself is part of the larger missions to the Moon and even human exploration to Mars.
Perseverance Rover is balanced
“On April 6, the meticulous three-day process began with perseverance that rose to the rover’s rotation device,” NASA said in the blog post. “The team then slowly rotated the rover around its x-axis, an imaginary line that runs through the rover from its tail to its forehead, to determine its center of gravity (the point at which the weight is evenly dispersed throughout the sides) in relation to that axis, “explains the publication.
The NASA team then moved the Perseverance rover to a turntable, the surface of which was on a spherical air bearing that levitated over a thin layer of nitrogen gas. The objective was to minimize the friction that affects the precision of the results.
NASA tests could be better understood with a comparison. For example, just like an auto mechanic places weights on the rim of a car tire to balance it, the Perseverance team analyzed the data and then added 6.27 kg to the rover’s chassis. The result is that perseverance is within the exact mission that designers intended.
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