NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/JHU-APL
NASA will land its nuclear-powered Mars 2020 rover in Jezero Crater (center).
NASA has announced where it plans to land on Mars in 2020 and look for symptoms of aliens on the Red Planet’s soil.
The car-sized robot is expected to land inside the 45-kilometer-diameter Jezero crater, an ancient impact site located just north of the Martian equator. It was one of more than 60 sites NASA studied during its years of research. .
NASA’s Mars 2020 rover is made from a backup of the Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in August 2012 and has been traveling around the nuclear-powered Red Planet ever since. But the new six-wheeled robot will have major innovations in its wheels and. . . And, more importantly, they will be supplied to “collect rock and soil samples and store them in a hiding place on the planet’s surface,” the company said in a press release.
If this container of dirt and rock is effectively hidden, it will be the first step in an unprecedented multi-mission effort to collect and transport the first pattern from Mars to Earth, where scientists can analyze it in detail. detail.
“The Jezero Crater landing site provides geologically rich terrain, with landforms dating back 3. 6 billion years, that can potentially answer vital questions in planetary evolution and astrobiology,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator. , in the statement. “Samples from this unique domain will revolutionize our view of Mars and its ability to support life. “
NASA/JPL-Caltech
A rendering of NASA’s Mars 2020 rover exploring the Martian surface.
NASA plans to launch the Mars 2020 rover in July or August 2020, and the rover would arrive on Mars in April or May 2021.
Like Curiosity, NASA plans to use a death-defying “aerial crane” formula to submerge the 2,315-pound weight into the Martian surface.
Jezero was named after the city in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2007 and means “lake” in several Slavic languages.
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