CAP CANAVERAL, Florida – The largest and most maximum Mars rover ever built, a car-sized vehicle loaded with cameras, microphones, training and lasers, flew to the Red Planet on Thursday as part of a long-range task to bring the first samples. Martian rocks back to Earth to look for evidence of ancient life.
NASA’s perseverance drove a rugged Atlas V rocket into a transparent morning sky, the world’s third and final launch to Mars in the summer. China and the United Arab Emirates received a preview last week, however, the three missions are expected to succeed at their destination in February after a seven-month, 300 million-kilometre journey.
The plutonium-powered six-wheel rover will excavate and collect tiny geological specimens that will be taken home around 2031 in a type of interplanetary relay race involving various spacecraft and countries. The total charge is more than $8 billion.
NASA’s scientific mission chief, Thomas Zurbuchen, said the launch marked the beginning of humanity’s “first circular to some other planet.”
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In addition to potentially answering one of the deepest and deepest questions of science, faith, and philosophy: has there ever been or has there ever been life beyond the earth? – The project will provide classes that can pave the way for the arrival of astronauts as early as the 2030s.
“There is an explanation by which we call the robot Perseverance. Because it’s hard to get to Mars,” said NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine just before takeoff. “In this case, it’s more complicated than ever because we’re doing it in the middle of a pandemic.”
Shortly after takeoff, Perseverance entered safe mode, a type of protective hibernation, after a temperature reading triggered an alarm.
But the deputy director of the project, Matt Wallace, later said that the spacecraft gave the impression of being in good condition, with temperatures falling back within the right limits, and that NASA would probably return to its general cruise status in a day or more. Then.
“It all depends on a healthy spacecraft that is able to move to Mars and fulfill its mission,” he said.
The United States, the only country that has safely installed a spacecraft on Mars, will effectively complete its ninth landing on the planet, which has proven to be the Bermuda Triangle of Space Exploration, with more than a portion of the world’s missions burning, crashing. or else. ended in failure.
If all goes well, the rover will descend to the Martian surface on February 18 in what NASA calls seven minutes of terror, which the ship will go from 12,000 mph to a full stop. It carries 25 cameras and a couple of microphones that will allow Earthlings to adhere via proxy.
Perseverance will point to Jezero Crater, a treacherous and unexplored expanse of rocks, cliffs, dunes and, in all likelihood, rocks bearing the chemical signature of microbes than a lake more than 3 billion years ago.
The rover will take half-ounce rock samples on dozens of super-sterilized titanium tubes.
It will also launch a mini-helicopter that will attempt the first motorized flight on the planet and check out other technologies to pave the way for long-term astronauts. This includes devices to extract oxygen from the thin carbon dioxide environment of Mars.
Samples taken directly from Mars, not from meteorites discovered on Earth, have long been “the holy grail of mars science,” according to NASA’s retired Tsar Scott Hubbard.