Now you can breathe easy: everything is officially fine with NASA Recently Released Mars Rover Perseverance.
Perseverance entered a protective “safe mode” shortly after takeoff yesterday (July 30) because part of the spacecraft cooled slightly more than expected when it approached Earth’s shadow.
NASA officials emphasized at the time that this development was not particularly worrisome and that perseverance was the centerpiece of the agency’s $ 2.7 billion. Mars Mission 2020, will probably recover quickly. That optimism was confirmed: The rover went out of safe mode and resumed normal operations, mission team members announced today (July 31).
Live updates: NASA Mars Rover Perseverance Mission in Real Time
“With the departure in safe mode, the team is moving into the interplanetary cruise business,” said Matt Wallace, deputy manager for Mars 2020 projects, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. said in an update today. “Next stop, Jezero Crater.”
Perseverance will land inside the 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer) Jezero on February 18, 2021. The crater housed a lake and river delta billions of years ago, and the car-sized rover will search the area signs of antiquity life and characterize its geology in detail.
Perseverance will also collect and cache several dozen samples on Mars, which is a joint campaign by NASA / European Space Agency will return to earth, possibly already in 2031.
Related: The Mars Perseverance rover mission in photos
Mars 2020 will also hold various technology demos. For example, one of the Perseverance instruments will generate oxygen from the carbon dioxide-dominated atmosphere of Mars. The mission also has a small helicopter called wit, which will attempt to make the first helicopter flights in the skies of another world.
Mars 2020 is one of three missions currently making their way to the Red Planet. The United Arab Emirates’ Hope Orbiter and from China Tianwen-1 orbiter-lander-rover mission released on July 19 and July 23, respectively. All of these ships are scheduled to reach Mars in February 2021.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book on the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
