Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP) – NASA’s new Mars rover crashed into a dusty red road this week, putting it on a 21-foot audiometer in its first test drive.
On Thursday, two weeks after landing on the red planet to get signs of past life, the Perseverance Rover got out of its landing position.
Dizzy, the back and forth drive lasted only 33 minutes and went so well that more driving was on tap on Friday and Saturday for the six-wheeled rover.
“This is really the beginning of our journey here,” said NASA engineer Rich Riber. “This is going to be like Odd DC, there will be adventures along the way, hopefully no cyclops, and I’m sure there will be stories written about it.”
In his first drive, he diligently advanced 13 feet, took a 150-degree left turn, then took an 8-foot backup. During a news conference Friday, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California shared photos of tracks around and around small boulders.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been happy to see the wheel tracks and I’ve seen a lot of them,” said engineer Anas Zarifian.
Flight controllers are still testing all systems of perseverance. So far, everything looks good. The rover’s 7-foot robot arm, for example, wrapped its muscles for the first time on Tuesday.
Before the car-sized rover can sail to the ancient river delta to collect rocks to finally return to Earth, it must drop its so-called defensive “belly pan” and launch an experimental helicopter called the Tact.
As it turned out, Diligence landed on the edge of a potential helicopter landing strip – a nice, flat place, according to Reber. So the plan is to get out of this landing strip, dig a leaf, then return to the expected test flight of ingenuity. All this should be completed by the end of late spring.
Scientists are discussing whether the easiest way to get to the nearest delta is to go or, perhaps, the hardest way with interesting fossils from a watery time billions to billions of years ago.
Continuously – NASA’s largest and most extensive rover – became the ninth American spacecraft to successfully land on Mars on February 18. China expects its small rover – currently orbiting the Red Planet – to land in the next few months.
Meanwhile, NASA scientists announced Friday that they have named Perseverance’s touchdown site in honor of late science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler, who grew up next to the JPL in Pasadena. She was one of the first African Americans to receive mainstream attention to science fiction. His works include “Bloodchild and Other Stories” and “The Proverb of the Sower”.
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