Almost seven months after liftoff, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars. The rover made history after successfully landing in the Jezero crater of Mars on February 18, 2021. Since it was launched, it had sent out several astonishing images of the landing site. The main job of the Perseverance rover is to search for signs of ancient life and collect rock and regolith samples (broken rock and soil) for a possible return to Earth. One of the interesting facts about the Perseverance rover is that it is controlled by an Indian-born doctor from London.
Professor Sanjeev Gupta is a NASA scientist. This $ 3 billion mission to Mars is being controlled by Professor Gupta from his rented one-bedroom apartment in London. Professor Sanjeev Gupta was supposed to be in California at the mission control unit but, due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, he was unable to arrive in time.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Professor Sanjeev Gupta said: “It should be in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, in a series of offices each about three times the size of this room, filled with hundreds of scientists and engineers with the head buried in laptops surrounded by large screens. “
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When he learned that he could not reach the mission control unit in California, Sanjeev Gupta decided to rent a one-bedroom apartment above a barber shop in Lewisham. Sanjeev Gupta lives with his wife and children and he did not want to disturb them or disturb their sleep and that is the reason why he rented this one bedroom apartment. Professor Gupta has turned the apartment into a mini control room with five computers and two other screens for video conferencing with other NASA scientists.
This mission is accompanied by a team of nearly 400 scientists and Professor Sanjeev Gupta is directing the Perseverance rover to drill for samples on Mars. These samples will be packaged and transported back to Earth on a separate mission. These samples are expected to reach Earth in 2027. Professor Sanjeev Gupta is an expert in geology at Imperial College London.
A few days ago, the US space agency NASA released a video where the Rover landed on the red planet. The Perseverance rover also captured the noise of the roaring wind on Mars and was the first audio on the planet. Perseverance is the most sophisticated rover NASA has ever sent to the Red Planet. Perseverance is also transporting several cutting-edge technologies to the surface of Mars, including a helicopter.
called Ingenuity, the first aircraft to attempt controlled, powered flight on another planet.
It is the first rover to collect samples and bring them back to Earth on a future mission. The Perseverance drill will cut intact rock cores that are roughly the size of a piece of chalk and place them in sample tubes that it will store until the rover reaches an appropriate unloading location on Mars. The rover could also deliver the samples to a lander that is part of the planned Mars sample return campaign.
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