NASA released an image showing the first traces of the Persevernace rover In its first meters, it traveled on the surface of the Jezero Crater on Mars on March 4.
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Perseverance landed on February 18, 2021, and the team has spent the weeks since landing revising the probe to prepare for surface operations. This photo was taken by the rover’s navigation cameras.
The first Race of Perseverance covered 6.5 meters across the landscape of Mars. It was a mobility test that was just one of many milestones as team members review and calibrate each system, subsystem, and tool in Perseverance. Once the rover begins to pursue its science targets, a uniform displacement of 200 meters or more is expected.
“When it comes to wheeled vehicles on other planets, there are few of them Anis Zarifyan, the engineer of the mobility test bed for the 2020 Mars Rover at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said events for the first time amounted to the significance of a first flight.
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“This was our first opportunity to ‘kick the tires’ and take advantage of the tenacity in a ride. The 4WD rover has responded wonderfully. We are now confident our powertrain is ready to go, capable of taking us. Where the flag takes us,” Zarivian said. During the next two years. “
The journey took about 33 minutes, pushing the rover 4 meters forward, then turning 150 degrees to the left and returning 2.5 meters to its new temporary stop.
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To help better understand the dynamics of the landing of an ancient missile on the Red Planet, engineers have used Perseverance cameras for navigation and hazard prevention to obtain images of where the Perseverance has landed. Mars dust dispersed with its engines.
The Rover Mobility System was not the only one tested during this initial testing period. On February 26, the eighth Mars, or Sun, since landing, mission watchers have completed a software update, replacing the computer program that helped the persistence of the landing with one they would rely on to explore the planet.
Most recently, controllers have tested the RIMFAX (Radar Imaging of the Mars Subsurface Experiment) and MOXIE (Experience Using Mars’ oxygen resources in situ), and deployed wind sensors for the Spanish MEDA (Martian Environment Dynamics Analyzer), which extends outward from the rover mast. Another important milestone occurred on March 2, or Sol 12, when engineers loosened the robotic arm of the two-meter spacecraft for the first time and bended all five of its joints over a two-hour period.
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Upcoming events and evaluations include more detailed tests and calibrations of scientific instruments, the dispatch of the rover at longer distances, and the disposal of the covers that protect the rover sample storage system and the Innovation helicopter on landing. The Ingenuity helicopter pilot flight test program will also be conducted during the commencement of the rover.
Regardless, the rover sends out images from the most advanced camera array that has ever traveled to Mars. Mission cameras have already sent around 7,000 photos.
With persistence out of the landing site, the scientists on the expedition team memorialized the site, informally naming it the late science fiction author Octavia E-Butler. The pioneering writer was a native of Pasadena, California, the first African-American woman to win the Hugo Prize and the Nebula Prize, and the first science fiction writer to be honored with a MacArthur Scholarship.
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The place where the perseverance began its mission on Mars is now called “Octavia E. Butler Landing”.
Butler, who passed away in 2006, has authored notable works such as “Kindred,” “Bloodchild,” “Speech Sounds,” “Parable of the Sower,” “Parable of the Talents” and “Patternist.” His writings explore issues of race, gender, equality and humanity, and his works are as relevant today as they were when they were originally written and published, as NASA explains.
Europa Press