The Perseverance Mars rover is traveling through its initial checkout and activation, retrieving some 7,000 photos to date, releasing its seven-foot-long robot arm and taking a short test drive after a post-landing software upgrade, engineers said Friday.
Robert Hogg, deputy mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said the 2. 2.4 billion rover’s scientific instruments, along with a suite of weather sensors, have been tested to keep tabs on the robot’s harsh environment.
He said, “Everything is going very well on our latest mission to Mars. “During her first two weeks on the Red Planet, Drata is doing an extraordinary job. … I was pleased to announce our first expedition on Tuesday afternoon.”
NASA / JPL-Caltech
A ton rover drove a short 13-foot drive, made a 150-degree left turn and then backed up about eight feet.
“Our first drive went well with excitement,” said Anas Zarifian, a Perseverance Mobility Test bed engineer. She showed a razor-sharp photo taken by one of the rover’s 25 cameras, showing a ribbed tire track in the mud of length.
“You can see the wheel track protruding on Mars,” he told reporters. “I don’t think I’ve ever been happy to see wheel tracks, and I’ve seen a lot of them. These are just big goals.”
Like the Curiosity rover that landed in the second Mars crater in 2012, the diligence is advancing at a top speed of 0.1 mph. But thanks to improvements to its advanced navigation software and its camera suite, “we can actually drive five times faster than Curiosity, and we’re able to reach an average of about 200 meters (per day).”
The lawsuit was eventually settled out of court on February 18, at a place named after an African-American science fiction writer and a native of Pasadena.
Announcing the honor, Deputy Project Scientist Katie Stack Morgan said Butler’s protagonist “embodies determination and research, making her perfectly fit for the Perseverance Rover mission.”
NASA / JPL-Caltech
The rover’s landing was configured by software designed to handle the challenges of a long, seven-month cruise to Mars and then a white-copy seven-minute descent to the surface. Once landed, the engineers no longer faced the somewhat difficult task of flushing the necessary software and loading programming that would be used for surface science missions.
The software update took several days to complete.
“This is software that really highlights all the capabilities currently available for our surface goal.” “It’s about 16 megabytes, so very small. But when operating, it has 140 functions, all running on the rover’s computer at the same time.
“When we updated this, we had to be very careful not to have any major problems, because, you know, there is no help line to call or any way we can run on the rover and make a big reset. Press the button. So we were very careful, and it was a great relief for the team to do that. “
Scientists are studying the initial image to determine the best route from the landing site to the relatively nearby rocks where the now-defunct river flows into the Jazer, possibly accumulating traces of past microbial life.
The rover’s telephoto footage looks like layered, weather-resistant deposits such as shells on Earth that often protect organic carbon and others with “biosignature.”
Two possible routes to Delta have been identified, but the science team has not yet chosen the best course or identified the right area for the test flights of 80 million drones still attached to the rover’s belly.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
“After two weeks on the mission we found about 7,000 images from the rover’s camera, including our first views of some of the geographic targets of the research that brought the rover Jezero,” Morgan said. “We are now working with engineers to determine which route is the most efficient and safe and has the most scientific interest.”
“And then we’ll get there next to the Delta. From there, we’ll go to the Delta and finally stick to the mouth of the river that once entered Jazero, where we’ll probably deposit our first sample. Depot,” Morgan added.
Determination of Mars is the first mission specifically designed to look at evidence of past microbial life. It is equipped with a complex system to collect promising clay and rock samples and to collect promising clay and rock samples to return to Earth using a combination of NASA and European Space Agency spacecraft.
On Thursday, NASA announced a deal with Northrop Grumman, valued at rop 5 million, to begin work on the propulsion system needed to launch the samples received after their recovery by another NASA rover into Mars orbit. The European Space Agency is designing a spacecraft to capture samples by the end of the decade and bring them back to Earth for detailed laboratory analysis.
“This is one for the era for JPL and NASA,” Hogg said. “Even though it will take a long time, it is passing in the blink of an eye, when we will be able to return these (samples) to Earth for the world’s scientists to analyze.”
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