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By Reuters
(Reuters) – NASA’s next-generation Mars Mars rover took off Thursday from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on an Atlas five rocket as a component of a $2.4 billion project to look for lines beyond lives in Earth’s planetary neighbor.
The next-generation robot robot robot, a six-wheeled vehicle long by a car with seven clinical tools, is also expected to deploy a mini helicopter to Mars and check the device for long-lasting human journeys to the fourth planet of the sun. Its arrival on Mars is scheduled for February 18 in that of an ancient river delta.
It rose to the sky from Cape Canaveral Air Force Base in Florida at 07five0 EDT (11five0 GMT) in clear, sunny and warm situations carried through an Atlas five rocket from the Boeing-Lockheed United Launch Alliance joint venture. The launch came here after the installation of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, where the engineers of his project were located, shaken by an earthquake.
“The spacecraft is healthy and on its way to Mars,” NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine wrote on Twitter.
The launch is not done without a small challenge. In the early hours after takeoff, the recovery of the exact location of the spacecraft and positioning knowledge were hampered through a brief “communication challenge,” NASA officials said, involving the agency’s global network of antennas that used to talk to its maximum remote probes. The challenge was temporarily resolved.
This marks NASA’s ninth voyage to the Martian surface.
“Actually, it’s a key to a lot of new studies that we’re doing that focus on the subject … is there life there?” said the head of the area agency’s science department Thomas Zurbuchen a live broadcast from NASA after launch.
The director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Mike Watkins, joked about the California earthquake: “It’s just that Earth was excited to move to Mars. It’s a very small event. Everything’s fine, and we’re on our way to Mars.”
Perseverance is due to the landing at the foot of a 250-meter (820-foot) deep crater called Jezero, from an ancient lake-water formula 3.5 billion years ago that scientists suspect may provide evidence beyond the possible microbial life.
Scientists have long wondered whether Mars, once a much more hospitable position than it is today, has been home to life. Water is a key element in life, and billions of years ago, Mars had many on the surface before the planet became a hard and desolate outpost.
It is Earth’s third launch to Mars this month, after probes sent through the United Arab Emirates and China.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence wrote on Twitter: “Today is a day for American leadership in space!”
HELICOPTER ENGINEERING
On board Perseverance is a four-pound (1.8 kg) autonomous helicopter called Ingenuity due to a control flight on Mars. The thin Martian environment, 99% less dense than Earth’s, poses a challenge to ingenuity, which was designed to be light, with larger rotor blades and spinning faster than required for a helicopter of its mass on Earth.
Since the first Mars rover Sojourner landed in 1997, NASA has sent three others – Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity – that have explored the geology of Martian plains and detected signs of past water formations. NASA also has successfully sent five landers: Viking 1 and 2, Pathfinder, Phoenix and InSight.
The United States plans to send astronauts to Mars in the 2030s as a component of a program that plans to use a return to the moon as a test platform for human missions before making the adventure on Mars with a more ambitious crew.
Perseverance will conduct an experiment to turn elements of the carbon dioxide-rich environment into a booster for long-range rockets introduced outside the Martian surface, or to produce breathable oxygen for long-term astronauts. Perseverance will also gather and buy samples of rocks and soils that will be returned to Earth in the long run.
(Reporting through Joey Roulette in Washington; edited through Will Dunham)
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