Daily Archives: February 22, 2021

Elated NASA scientists Friday pored through the first landing scenes transmitted by the space agencys Perseverance rover on Mars.

In the most dramatic image, a camera aboard the Perseverance landing system captured a close-up of the one-ton six-wheeled mobile robot suspended just a few yards above the surface of the red planet, where it successfully touched down Thursday, after a 292-million-mile journey from Earth.

Hanging from the cables used to lower it from the lander to the ground, the rover resembled a high-tech marionette dangling on strings.

You can see the dust kicked up by the rovers engines, said Adam Steltzner, Perseverance chief engineer at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. It was stunning and the team was awestruck. And, you know, there is just a feeling of victory that we were able to take these.

As it prospects for past life on Mars over the next two years, NASAs $2.7 billion rover will be transmitting a vast portfolio of high-resolution images, panoramic views and 3-D color stereo landscapes back to mission engineers and scientists.

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Mars Photos: See NASAs Perseverance Rovers First Visions of Red Planet - The Wall Street Journal

Nasas science rover Perseverance, the most advanced astrobiology laboratory ever sent to another world, streaked through the Martian atmosphere on Thursday and landed safely on the floor of a vast crater, its first stop on a search for traces of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet.

Mission managers at Nasas jet propulsion laboratory near Los Angeles burst into applause and cheers as radio signals confirmed that the six-wheeled rover had survived its perilous descent and arrived within its target zone inside Jezero crater, site of a long-vanished Martian lake bed.

The robotic vehicle sailed through space for nearly seven months, covering 293m miles (472m km) before piercing the Martian atmosphere at 12,000mph (19,000km/h) to begin its approach to touchdown on the planets surface.

The spacecrafts self-guided descent and landing during a complex series of maoeuvres that Nasa dubbed the seven minutes of terror stands as the most elaborate and challenging feat in the annals of robotic spaceflight.

Touchdown confirmed! Perseverance safely on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking signs of past life, the flight controller, Swati Mohan, announced at mission control to back-slapping, fist-bumping colleagues wearing masks against the coronavirus.

A second round of cheers and applause erupted in the control room as the images of the surface arrived minutes after touchdown. Partially obscured by a dust cover, the first picture was a view from one of the Perseverances hazard cameras. It showed the flat, rocky surface of the Jezero crater.

A second image taken by a camera on board the spacecraft showed a view from behind the rover of the Jezero crater. The rover appeared to have touched down about 32 metres (35 yards) from the nearest rocks.

It really is the beginning of a new era, Nasas associate administrator for science, Thomas Zurbuchen, said earlier in the day during Nasas webcast of the event.

Perseverance approached Mars at about 12,400mph, although when it hit the top of the atmosphere, a heatshield slowed it down to about a tenth of this speed. Then a supersonic parachute popped out of the rover to reduce its speed to a few hundred miles per hour.

At that point, descending under the parachute, Perseverance was still travelling far too fast to land safely. So it cut itself loose from the parachute and used rocket thrusters to slow down further. The thrusters allowed it to hover roughly 20 metres above the surface, before the rover was lowered by cables to the surface using a rocket platform called a sky crane.

At post-landing briefing, Nasas acting chief, Steve Jurczyk, called it an amazing accomplishment, adding, I cannot tell you how overcome with emotion I was.

The descent and landing systems had performed flawlessly, said Matt Wallace, the deputy project manager for the rover, adding: The good news is the spacecraft, I think, is in great shape, said Matt Wallace, the missions deputy project manager.

The landing represented the riskiest part of two-year, $2.7bn endeavor whose primary aim is to search for possible fossilized signs of microbes that may have flourished on Mars about 3bn years ago, when the fourth planet from the sun was warmer, wetter and potentially hospitable to life.

Scientists hope to find biosignatures embedded in samples of ancient sediments that Perseverance is designed to extract from Martian rock for future analysis back on Earth the first such specimens ever collected by humankind from another planet.

Two subsequent Mars missions are planned to retrieve the samples and return them to Nasa in the next decade.

Nasa scientists have described Perseverance as the most ambitious of nearly 20 US missions to Mars dating back to the Mariner spacecrafts 1965 fly-by.

Joe Biden tweeted congratulations over the landing, saying: Today proved once again that with the power of science and American ingenuity, nothing is beyond the realm of possibility, the president said.

Perseverance is carrying a clutch of instruments designed to analyse rocks for biosignatures chemical hallmarks of life and will also store other samples from the planets surface. Future missions fuelled by Europe and the US will retrieve these samples and return them to Earth.

The emergence of life on Earth is an extraordinary event that is not fully understood, and ancient Mars had a much more benign climate than it has now, with many of the same raw materials that were available on Earth, said Colin Wilson, a physicist at Oxford University.

Of all the steps needed to develop life, how many occurred on Mars? This [mission] tells us not only about whether were alone in the solar system but also about how likely we are to find life in the thousands of other planets being discovered around other suns so [it] has truly cosmic implications, he said.

Apart from new instruments and an upgraded autopilot system, engineers have given Perseverance the ability to deploy a diminutive helicopter. Called Ingenuity, the 1.8kg drone-like rotorcraft is the first flying machine ever sent to another planet, and could serve as a pathfinder to discover inaccessible areas or as a scout for future rovers.

The landing site was chosen for its promise for preserving signs of life: it was once home to an ancient lake and river delta that may have collected and buried microbes and locked them within rocks.

Apart from Nasa, missions from the UAE and China to Mars also kicked off last year. In 2023 the European Space Agency is expected to land on Mars its Rosalind Franklin rover, which will carry a drill capable of reaching metres below the surface, where biomolecules may survive protected from the harsh conditions above.

Schwenzer said that if indications of life were discovered on Mars and there was a huge responsibility on scientists to be sure it would be the most exciting finding since the insight that the Earth is not flat.

Reuters contributed reporting

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Mars rover landing: Nasa's Perseverance touches down safely in search of life - The Guardian

A rover and a tiny helicopter are preparing to land on Mars, aiming to offer an opportunity to answer an enduring question: has life ever emerged on another planet?

Nasas ninth mission to descend on the cold, dry, red planet will be steered by a $2.7bn (2.1bn), car-sized, six-wheeled rover christened Perseverance, which is expected to touch down on Thursday following a seven-month journey.

Previous Mars missions including Curiosity and Opportunity have suggested Mars was once a wet planet with an environment likely to have been potentially supportive of life billions of years ago. Astrobiologists hope this latest mission can offer some evidence to prove whether that was the case.

Perseverance is carrying a clutch of instruments designed to analyse rocks for biosignatures chemical hallmarks of life and will also store other samples from the planets surface. Future missions fuelled by Europe and the US will retrieve these samples and return them to Earth.

The emergence of life on Earth is an extraordinary event that is not fully understood, and ancient Mars had a much more benign climate than it has now, with many of the same raw materials that were available on Earth, noted Colin Wilson, a physicist at Oxford University.

Of all the steps needed to develop life, how many occurred on Mars? This [mission] tells us not only about whether were alone in the solar system but also about how likely we are to find life in the thousands of other planets being discovered around other suns so [it] has truly cosmic implications, he said.

Apart from new instruments and an upgraded autopilot system, engineers have given Perseverance the ability to deploy a diminutive helicopter. Called Ingenuity, the 1.8kg drone-like rotorcraft is the first flying machine ever sent to another planet, and could serve as a pathfinder to discover inaccessible areas or as a scout for future rovers.

Mission controllers are steering the rover which weighs more than a tonne towards the 28 mile-wide (45km) Jezero crater north of the planets equator. The site was chosen for its promise for preserving signs of life: it was once home to an ancient lake and river delta that may have collected and buried microbes and locked them within rocks.

But with its low gravity and rarefied atmosphere, Mars is hardly a hospitable destination. More than half of the spacecraft sent there have blown up or crashed owing to hardware or software mishaps. Nasas new generation of rovers, including Perseverance, rely on a rocket platform called a sky crane to lower it on to Marss surface.

Perseverance is barrelling towards Mars at around 12,400 miles per hour; when it hits the top of the atmosphere, a heatshield slows it down to about a tenth of this speed. Then a supersonic parachute will pop out of the rover and reduce its speed to a few hundred miles per hour.

At that point, descending under the parachute, Perseverance will still be travelling far too fast to land safely. So it will then have to cut itself loose from the parachute and use rocket thrusters to slow down further. The thrusters will be used to hover roughly 20 metres above the surface, and the rover is then lowered by cables to the surface using the sky crane. The crane itself will then fire its rockets to crash at a safe distance.

Things can go wrong at multiple junctures. After covering hundreds of millions of miles, the rover needs to perform all landing autonomously. No corrections are possible because the long distance means any signal travels for several minutes, noted Susanne Schwenzer, an astrobiologist at the Open University.

Wind could divert the landing craft, especially in the parachute phase. The Martian surface itself, which can be strewn with boulders and contain sand patches and dunes as well as slopes and canyons,could be another obstacle in finding a safe landing spot, she said.

But, if all goes as planned, radio signals confirming success will be sent, followed shortly afterwards by the first images from the rover. Perseverance is scheduled to stick around for at least one Mars year two Earth years.

I am happily nervous in anticipation of the words we are safe on Mars, said Schwenzer. Having watched the Curiosity landing live, and knowing it can work, makes me optimistic, but of course, landing on another planet is never easy, never routine.

Apart from Nasa, missions from the UAE and China to Mars also kicked off last year. In 2023 the European Space Agency is expected to land on Mars its Rosalind Franklin rover, which will carry a drill capable of reaching metres below the surface, where biomolecules may survive protected from the harsh conditions above.

Schwenzer said that if indications of life were discovered on Mars and there was a huge responsibility on scientists to be sure it would be the most exciting finding since the insight that the Earth is not flat.

Excerpt from:

Nasa Perseverance rover to land on Mars in search of life - The Guardian

NASAs Perseverance probe landed safely and on time on Mars, at 3:55 p.m. EST, Thursday, marking another success for the U.S. space agency.

The nuclear-powered probe made its way through a harrowing landing process, deemed by some engineers as seven minutes of terror because it involves parachutes, powered descent and a sky crane that gently lowers Perseverance onto a challenging, rocky area of Martian surface.

After a confirmed safe landing, members of the probes Mission Control erupted in applause and cheers.

NASA has now successfully landed nine of 10 probes sent to the Red Planet.

Minutes after touching down, Perseverance beamed back a black-and-white image from the surface as more applause broke out at Mission Control.

The probe is equipped with a microphone, which should have recorded its descent.

Later Thursday, President Joe Biden sent a congratulatory tweet, saying: "Today proved once again that with the power of science and American ingenuity, nothing is beyond the realm of possibility."

Perseverance, and its helicopterlike companion drone, Ingenuity, began the 300-million-mile journey in July. Ingenuity will test if powered flight can be done in Mars thin atmosphere.

The six-wheeled Perseverance, which looks like the other four rover probes that have landed on Mars, set down in Jezero Crater, which is believed to be an ancient lakebed and a potential source for remnants of ancient life.

Determining if Mars once hosted life is the primary goal of the probes two-year mission.

During its search, the probe will take samples from the Red Planets surface and store them in its 43 sample tubes. NASA plans to send another mission to Mars to retrieve the tubes sometime in the early 2030s.

Before collecting samples, NASA will spend the next weeks making sure Perseverances systems are all working.

You can follow Perseverances progress on its Twitter account.

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Perseverance Probe Successfully Lands on Mars - Voice of America

Editors Note: NASA's Perseverance rover successfully landed on Mars on February 18 just before 4 p.m. eastern time. Read more about the mission here.

After a seven-month, nearly 300-million-mile journey to Mars, NASAs Perseverance rover is poised to undertake one of the most challenging engineering feats in human history: touchdown on the red planet.

At 3:55 p.m. eastern time today, the 2,260-pound roverthe heaviest object ever sent to the surface of another planetshould set its wheels in the ruddy dirt of Jezero Crater to begin its search for signs of past life. But to get to the ground, the rover must endure what NASA calls the seven minutes of terror. The spacecraft carrying the rover has been hurtling from Earth to Mars and will slam into the atmosphere at high speed. So in the span of about seven minutes, the spacecraft must slow its descent and settle gently on the surface.

Landing on Mars is really all about finding a way to stop, says Allen Chen, the lead engineer for Perseverances entry, descent, and landing (EDL) system. Perseverance will hit the atmosphere going over 12,000 miles per hour, but it needs to touch down at about two miles per hour.

To land, Perseverance will use a sky crane, a system devised by NASA and used in 2012 to successfully deposit the Curiosity rover in Marss Gale Crater. And, for the first time, video cameras and microphones will capture the full descent of a spacecraft as it lands on Mars. We really want to take people along for the ride this time and see what its like to land on another planet, Chen says.

You can watch live coverage of the landing on NASA TV starting at 2:15 p.m. eastern time, as the mission control team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California track the spacecrafts descent. But the video and audio of Perseverances landing will take more time to transmit to Earth. Due to the current distance between the two planets, sending even a basic radio signal to Earth will take about 11 and a half minutes. And before it can transmit audio or video, the rover must first indicate that it is safe. It will then have several other tasks to perform during its first days on Mars, such as starting up its surface operations software and deploying a mast with its primary science cameras.

If everything goes according to plan, the rover will send back an image tomorrow that will show the view looking down on Perseverance from above. By Monday, the team hopes to release video from the same view. The data for high-quality footage will take longer to transmit and process, so NASA should release high-resolution footage of the entire landing sequence in the coming weeks.

But first, the spacecraft has to make it safely to the surface.

Tucked behind a heat shield, the rover will begin to slow when it hits the atmosphere, like a meteor going across the sky, Chen says. Thrusters will direct the spacecraft toward its landing site as its body produces lift, kind of like an airplane in some ways.

Once it slows to about twice the speed of sound, Perseverance will deploy a 70-foot-wide parachute. You fire this parachute pack out of the back of the vehicle with basically a cannon, Chen says. A new technology called the range trigger will fire the parachute according to how close the spacecraft is to the landing site, allowing Perseverance to target a smaller landing zone than Curiosity, which deployed its parachute once it hit a certain velocity. The spacecraft will then jettison its heat shield and get its first look at the ground using radar and another new system called terrain-relative navigation.

Terrain-relative navigation gives the system eyes, almost literally, Chen says. By snapping photos of the surface and comparing them to onboard maps, which were created from photos taken by spacecraft orbiting Mars, Perseverance can land with enough precision to touch down in an area scattered with boulders and sloped inclines.

The Jezero landing site that were going to was actually rejected as a landing site for Curiosity because it was too unsafe, Chen says. But with terrain-relative navigation and the range trigger system, Perseverance can go where no Mars rover could go before.

Even after the chute has slowed the rover, it will still be hurtling toward the ground at about 160 miles an hour. Thats about as fast as a skydiver would be going, diving straight at the ground without a parachute, here on Earth, Chen says. In the wispy Martian atmosphere, where the air is less than one percent as thick as Earths, a parachute cannot slow the craft any further.

About 1.3 miles above the surface, the spacecraft will release from the parachute and then fire up rocket engines on its descent stage, slowing to about 1.7 miles an hour. At 70 feet above the ground, the descent stage will perform the sky crane maneuver: the landing system will lower the rover to the surface on tethers, then cut the cords and fly off to crash away from the rover.

Perseverance will lower itself from that rocket-powered jetpack thats called the descent stage, deploy its wheelsthats our landing gearand touch down, you know, slower than I can walk, Chen says.

As part of the mission, NASA is planning to capture a Mars landing like never before. A camera on the Curiosity rover filmed some of the missions landing in 2012, but the Perseverance landing will be recorded from all angles. At various stages, and sometimes simultaneously, multiple cameras will be looking up from the descent stage at the parachute, looking down from the descent stage at the rover, looking up from the rover at the sky crane, and looking down from the rover at the ground.

Its the kind of stuff Ive always been trying to imagine, Chen says. The first video, showing the rover touch down as seen from above, could be released as early as Monday, and high-resolution video from all of the cameras will be released in the following weeks.

Perseverance will also record audio of the descent using one of two microphones. Attached to the left side of the vehicle above the middle wheel, one mic is expected to capture sounds of the engines firing, pyrotechnic devices on the EDL system blowing bolts and severing cables, the rush of the wind, and hopefully those wheels actually crunching down onto the surface of Mars, says David Gruel, the assembly, test, and launch operations manager for Perseverance.

And then, for the first time in history, people will be able to listen to what it sounds like on another planet. The microphone will be sitting there on the surface of Mars, attached to the rover, listening to the ambient noises, Gruel says. It will remain on for about a minute after landing, and it could be switched on again for brief recording sessions as long as its temperature-sensitive parts survive the frigid Martian nights.

A second microphone is attached to the rovers SuperCam, an instrument equipped with a laser to vaporize rocks and determine their composition. That mic will listen to rocks being zapped and maybe even the wheels of Perseverance crunching against the desiccated dirt as it rolls across an alien world.

We use a lot of imagery, but weve never used sound to take part or participate as if youre on another planet, Gruel says. Who knows what exciting discoveries we might have with it.

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Watch NASA land the Perseverance rover on Mars - National Geographic

Ground controllers examine the first images of Jezero Crater taken by NASAs Perseverance rover moments after landing Thursday. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

NASAs Perseverance Mars rover set down on an ancient lakebed after a flawless plunge into the Martian atmosphere Thursday, achieving an unprecedented pinpoint landing while delivering the most sophisticated suite of science payloads ever flown to another planet.

The $2.4 billion Perseverance rover arrived at Jezero Crater, a basin that scientists say was once flooded with liquid water, after a nail-biting descent to the Red Planets rust-colored surface.

Wow! We have a science mission, said Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist from NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The nuclear-powered mobile robot capped a seven-month journey from a launch pad at Cape Canaveral with a high-speed dive into the Martian atmosphere. A heat shield cocooned the rover as it streaked through the rarefied air at more than 12,100 mph (19,500 kilometers per hour).

After surviving temperatures near 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit (1,300 degrees Celsius), the rover deployed a supersonic parachute, which billowed open to slow the spacecraft to subsonic speed. Perseverance next jettisoned its heat shield, allowing a landing radar and cameras to scan the Martian surface for a safe touchdown site.

The rovers aerodynamic backshell then released Perseverances rocket-powered descent stage to do the rest of the braking before landing. Eight throttleable engines on the rocket pack slowed the crafts speed to nearly 0 mph, and Nylon cords lowered the one-ton rover to the surface.

Once Perseverances wheels contacted Mars, the descent stage cut the cords and diverted to crash a safe distance away, leaving the rover safely on the ground at Jezero Crater.

We arrived at Mars moving at about 12,000 mph roughly, and just in seven short minutes, we had to slow down and gently put Perseverance down in Jezero Crater, said Matt Wallace, Perseverances deputy project manager at JPL. The system just performed flawlessly, getting through 10 or 12 Gs of deceleration, the supersonic parachute deployment, eight big main engines had to fire ,our terrain relative navigation hazard avoidance system had to perform the way it was designed. Its never easy.

Within minutes, the rover beamed back two low-resolution black-and-white images from its hazard cameras, providing the first-ever views of Jezeros landscape. The images are a taste of whats to come, and scientists expect to have high-definition video, color panoramas, and the first sound recordings from Mars beginning as soon as Friday.

In a post-landing press conference, Wallace said Perseverance is in great shape after arriving on Mars, and is ready for the next phase of a mission packed with firsts.

Ground teams were along for the ride Thursday. With Mars positioned some 127 million miles (204 million kilometers) from Earth, the one-way travel time for radio signals Thursday was more than 11 minutes.

That meant Perseverance followed pre-programmed commands and employed control software to land itself.

The vehicle is going on a roller coaster ride, and you are, too, said Allen Chen, Perseverances entry, descent, and landing lead at JPL.

Things seem to be working the way you want them to go, and you start feeling good then your stomach drops, then things are OK again, Chen said.

Its an emotional roller coaster ride all the way down, and youre second-guessing yourself as you go, even though its already happened, Chen said, referring to the 11-minute time way. Its kind of crazy.

Ground teams at JPL were physically distanced across multiple control rooms due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Many members of the science team monitored the landing remotely.

But the engineers gathered at JPL let out a roar of applause, cheers, and exchanged fist bumps as telemetry confirmed Perseverances successful landing at 3:55 p.m. EST (2055 GMT).

Perseverance reused the same landing architecture demonstrated by NASAs Curiosity rover when it landed on Mars in August 2012. But with nearly a decade of innovation since Curiosity, engineers upgraded Perseverances navigation algorithms to enable a more precise landing.

The rover Thursday navigated to a safe landing site free of steep slopes and boulders. Past Mars landers, without the new terrain relative navigation capability, could have not even attempted a landing on the rugged topography at Jezero Crater, according to NASA.

Chen said the rover ended up about 1.1 miles (1.7 kilometers) from the center of the landing zone.

President Joe Biden called Steve Jurczyk, NASAs acting administrator, to congratulate the Perseverance team after the landing Thursday afternoon. The White House also tweeted a picture of Biden watching the landing from the White House.

Perseverance is the ninth U.S. spacecraft to successfully land on Mars since the Viking missions in 1976. Two international Mars missions the Hope orbiter from the United Arab Emirates and the Tianwen 1 orbiter, lander, and rover from China arrived at the Red Planet earlier this month.

The Chinese Tianwen 1 mission will release its lander and rover to descend to the Martian surface in May or June.

But NASAs Perseverance rover, also known as Mars 2020, has the most ambitious goals of any Mars mission to date.

The rovers primary objective is to search for signs of past life and gather rock samples for return to Earth by future spacecraft in development by NASA and the European Space Agency.

NASA says it spent more than $2.4 billion to design, build and prepare the Mars 2020 mission for launch. With the money budgeted to operate the rover during the trip to Mars, and for around two Earth years (one Mars year) after landing, the total mission will cost around $2.7 billion.

The 2,260-pound (1,025-kilogram) Perseverance rover is about 10 feet (3 meters) long, 9 feet (2.7 meters wide), and 7 feet (2.2 meters) tall.

Jezero Crater, Perseverances landing site, was home to an ancient river delta and a lake the size of Lake Tahoe some 3.5 billion to 3.9 billion years ago. Scientists hope to find signatures of ancient life in the rocks and sediments deposited in the dried-up delta.

This is our first mobile astrobiologist, said Lori Glaze, head of NASAs planetary science division. One of its main purposes is to seek out those signs of past life on Mars.

Perseverance was designed to land as close to the delta deposits as possible. Farley said Thursday the rover ended up near the intersection of two geologic units, and the missions scientific targets will likely be the rocks visible in Perseverances first post-landing images.

The rover was expected to downlink sharper images from its hazard cameras Thursday night through a communications relay with the European ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, along with the first views from cameras that recorded high-resolution views throughout the spacecrafts descent. Perseverance carried 25 cameras to Mars, more than any previous mission to the Red Planet.

Wallace said NASA aims to release the new imagery during a press conference Friday.

For the first time, were going to be able to see ourselves, in high-definition video, land on another planet, Wallace said Thursday.

Commercial ruggedized cameras were pointing up at the rovers supersonic parachute, and one on the descent stage looked down at the rover as it prepared for touchdown suspended under Nylon bridles. Other cameras mounted on the rover were programmed to record views looking up and down during the landing.

We think we have captured some pretty spectacular video, and they come with a microphone as well, Wallace said. Perseverance has the first microphones flown to Mars.

I think thats really going to be something to see, he said.

Ground teams have mapped out a carefully-choreographed activation and test sequence for Perseverance over the next several weeks. The rover opened lens covers and released its high-gain communications antenna soon after landing Thursday. If all goes well, the high-gain antenna could obtain a lock with NASAs Deep Space Network as soon as Friday to enable faster data transfers between Earth and Mars, according to Jennifer Trosper, Perseverances deputy project manager at JPL.

Trosper said engineers will spend the first five days known as sols on Mars after landing to stabilize the rovers power, thermal, and communications systems before loading a software update into the spacecrafts computers next week.

A remote sensing mast with the rovers panoramic cameras, science instruments, and a Martian weather station will be raised Saturday, according to Trosper. In parallel with the rover checkouts, controllers will run the rovers seven scientific payloads through health tests and recharge Perseverances battery, fed by a radioactive plutonium power source.

Perseverance will take its first color panoramas this weekend.

After uploading updated software next week, ground teams at JPL will unlimber the rovers robotic arm and send commands for Perseverance to perform its first test drive, likely by rolling about 16 feet (5 meters) forward and background.

One of Perseverances first tasks after completing post-landing checkouts will be to drive to a nearby location to release NASAs Ingenuity helicopter from the rovers belly pan. The rover will drive away to a distance of at least 330 feet (100 meters) before the helicopter flies for the first time.

That moment will be historic. The tiny 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) robot will try to become the first aircraft to fly through the atmosphere of another planet.

Human beings have never flown a rotorcraft outside of our own Earths atmosphere, so this will be very much a Wright Brothers moment, except at another planet, said MiMi Aung, project manager for the Ingenuity helicopter at JPL, in an interview before Perseverances launch last July.

Trosper said Perseverance might be ready to start moving to the helicopter test site in about three weeks, and it might take about 10 days to reach the flight location, depending on the site selected by NASA managers.

Ground controllers will program the helicopter to perform a series of test flights during a planned 30-day campaign, beginning with a relatively simple up-and-down flight lasting less than 30 seconds, Aung said. Then the team will attempt more daring test flights.

The helicopter will fly autonomously, without real-time input from ground controllers millions of miles away. The drone carries two cameras, and telemetry from the helicopter will be routed through a base station on the rover. The Perseverance rover also might be able to take pictures of the helicopter in flight.

NASA officials approved adding the helicopter to the Mars 2020 mission in 2018. The mission cost around $80 million to design and develop, and will cost another $5 million to operate. Agency officials hope the helicopter will prove out aerial reconnaissance as a new method of interplanetary exploration.

Wallace, Perseverances deputy project manager, said this week the Ingenuity helicopter is much like NASAs Sojourner rover, which became the first mobile scout on Mars in 1997 and paved the way for future rovers.

I worked on Sojourner, and there was a lot of uncertainty at the time as to whether or not wed ever really be able to utilize this technology, and we found very quickly that having a mobile capability on the surface of Mars was incredibly valuable, Wallace said. When you look at Ingenuity, it looks very much the same. Its a technology demonstration. Its objective is not tied into the science of this mission. But the potential for aerial reconnaissance and exploration in the future, using this type of technology, is is terrific. Its not just on Mars, but other places as well.

Trosper said Perseverance could be in position for the helicopter test flights this spring, then will move into the missions science campaign to begin examining the geology and ancient habitability of Jezero Crater.

That will lead to the first use of the rovers drill to extract core samples from rocks in the summer, she said.

Members of Perseverances team say the hardware necessary to collect the rock samples and seal them inside ultra-clean tubes was the most complex undertaking of NASAs Mars program to date. The rover has 43 sample tubes on-board, each sheathed in a gold-colored cylindrical enclosure, providing an extra layer of contamination protection. The tubes rode to Mars inside the housings, and they will be returned to their sheaths once filled with Martian rock samples.

The tubes are about the size and shape of a slim cigar, and the 43 cylinders include witness tubes or blanks,which will allow scientists to cross-check rock and sediment specimens returned to Earth for contamination.

Those samples tubes are part of a Sample and Caching System, which is one of our biggest engineering developments for this mission, said Adam Steltzner, chief engineer on the Mars 2020 mission, before the launch last year. We get to Mars largely like the Curiosity rover got to Mars, but we need to do something very different once were on Mars. We must take these core samples, seal them hermetically and sterilely, and then produce a cache of samples for eventual return to Earth.

The rover has a 7-foot-long (2-meter) robotic arm with a coring drill fixed on a 99-pound (45-kilogram) turret on the end. The longer robotic arm will work in concert with a smaller 1.6-foot-long (0.5-meter) robotic manipulator inside the belly of the rover, which will pick up sample tubes for transfer to the main arm for drilling.

Steltzner said the rovers sampling system actually consists of three different robots.

Out at the end of our robotic arm thats the first robot is a coring drill that uses rotary percussive action like we have used similarly and previously on Mars with the Curiosity mission, except rather just generating powder, this creates an annular groove in the rock and breaks off a core sample, Steltzner said.

During each sample collection, the core sample will go directly into the tube attached to the drill.

That bit and the sample tube are brought back by the robotic arm our first robot into the second robot, our bit carousel, which receives the filled sample tube and delivers it to a very fine and detailed robot, the sample handling arm inside the belly of the beast, in which the sample is then assessed, its volume is measured, images are taken, and it is sealed and placed back into storage for eventually being placed in a cache on the surface.

The portion of the caching system inside the rover is called the Adaptive Caching Assembly, which consists of more than 3,000 parts alone.

The design of the drill and sample tubes is intended to preserve the distribution minerals cored from Martian rocks. The system is also intended to collect samples directly from softer soils.

Besides the sampling system, Perseverance hosts seven scientific instruments.

Two of the instruments, named PIXL and SHERLOC, are located alongside the coring drill on the robotic arms turret. Theywill scan Martian rocks to determine their chemical composition and search for organic materials, providing key inputs into decisions by ground teams on which rocks to drill.

The Perseverance rover also carries the SuperCam instrument,an intricate suite of sensors, including a camera, laser and spectrometers, designed to zap Martian rocks from more than 20 feet (6 meters) away to measure their chemical and mineral make-up, with the ability to identify organic molecules.

Developed by an international team in the United States, France and Spain, the SuperCam instrument is an upgraded version of the ChemCam instrument currently operating on NASAs Curiosity Mars rover.

The instruments mounted inside the rovers main body include MOXIE, whichwill demonstrate the production of oxygen from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mars, a capability that future astronaut explorers could use on the Red Planet. A Norwegian-developed ground-penetrating radar on the rover named RIMFAX will study the planets underground geologic structure, yielding data on subsurface layers and soil strength which could help designers of larger landers designed to carry people to Mars.

The mission also carries a weather station and the first camera on Mars with a zoom function. That camera system, located on top of Perseverances remote sensing mast to be raised this weekend, is named Mastcam-Z and will record video and 360-degree panoramas.

The differences between Perseverance and NASAs predecessor Curiosity rover do not stop at the science payload or the Ingenuity helicopter.

The Perseverance roveralso features aluminum wheels with thicker skin and modified treads to avoid damage observed on Curiositys wheels on Mars.NASAs new Mars rover weighs about 278 pounds (126 kilograms) more than Curiosity.

The benefit of another decade of technological advancement since Curiositys launch, and the budding fruits of NASAs partnership with ESA on a Mars Sample Return program, moves scientists closer to addressing the question of whether life took hold elsewhere in the solar system.

Assuming Perseverances mission is a success, and funding and technical plans remain on track, NASA and ESA could launch missions as soon as 2026 with a European-built Mars rover to retrieve the specimens collected by the Mars 2020 mission. The rover will deliver the material to a U.S.-supplied solid-fueled booster to shoot the samples from Mars into space, a feat never before attempted on another planet.

A separate spacecraft provided by ESA will link up with the samples in orbit around Mars, then head for Earth before releasing a NASA re-entry capsule containing the Martian material to complete the first round-trip interplanetary mission no earlier than 2031.

Then scientists will get to work analyzing the samples. They will look for chemical signatures in the core samples that might suggest life once existed on Mars.

Among other objectives, NASAs two Viking landers carried instruments to search for signs of life on Mars when they landed on the Red Planet in 1976. But the robotic landers did not produce any verifiable confirmation of life, andMars missions since Viking have followed the trail of water, seeking evidence that the Red Planet once harbored environments that could have supported basic life forms.

Two other NASA robots are still exploring the surface of Mars. Curiosity has been surveying Mount Sharp in Gale Crater since 2012, and the stationary InSight seismic station landed on Mars in 2018.

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NASA rover reaches Mars on mission in search for signs of past life Spaceflight Now - Spaceflight Now

Legendary Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin on Saturday hailed "all the folks" at NASA and its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) on the successful landing of the Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars.

Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, following Neil Armstrong, during the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969, shared his observations during a call-in interview on Fox News "Cavuto Live."

The New Jersey native, who turned 91 in January, has long been an advocate of efforts by the U.S. space program to explore Mars, the next planet after Earth in the direction away from the Sun.

Fox host Neil Cavuto began the segment by sharing the latest video images from Mars that were captured by Perseverance, the fifth rover that NASA has sent to the planet and ninth overall NASA landing there, according to The Associated Press.

HOW WILL NASAS PERSEVERANCE ROVER ENGINEERS PILOT FIRST HELICOPTER ON MARS?

He then asked Aldrin for his reaction to the Marslanding.

"I think its a great tribute to all the folks at NASA, led by Jim Bridenstine and all the other people, especially those in the control room at JPL," Aldrin said.

Bridenstine, the NASA administrator who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, left the agency Jan. 20, as President Biden took office.

Cavuto later asked Aldrin to estimate what year humans will be able to reach the surface of Mars.

"About 10, 20 years ago, my estimate was around 2030, 2033, and that was earlier than most other people were figuring," Aldrin responded.

Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin. (Associated Press)

"Weve got to do a good number of things in Artemis, our manned program to the moon ," he continued. "So its gonna take the first one at the moon and then the public is going to be ready to see the next, which will be a sophisticated improvement on manned missions."

Other planned missions to Mars include the landing of a smaller rover by China, scheduled for late spring, and a spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates that went into Martian orbit last week, the AP reported.

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Aldrin was previously in the news in January when he received his first coronavirus vaccine shot, just days ahead of his 91st birthday.

"I urge everyone to sign up for a vaccination as soon as possible when eligible to do, so that life can return to normal soon," Aldrin wrote on Twitter.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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Buzz Aldrin reacts to NASAs Perseverance rover landing on Mars - Fox News

Mars rover Perseverance has landed on the surface of Mars after a white-knuckle descent involving picking a landing spot just moments before making a rocket-powered sky-crane landing. The rover immediately sent back its first image of Jezero Crater, which it will be exploring over the course of its mission.

A clearly tense but optimistic team watched as Perseverance made its final approach to Mars a few hours ago, confirming it was on track to hit the bullseye of Jezero Crater, the ancient delta where the rover will soon be roving.

Except for a few brief but expected communications blackouts caused by the superheated air around the craft as it entered the thin Martian atmosphere, the lander sent back a continuous stream of updates to the team on Earth considerably delayed, of course, by the distance to the other planet.

The team, and charmingly the on-screen hosts at mission HQ audibly gasped, whispered yes! and made other signs of their excitement as news trickled in that atmosphere entry had occurred on time, that the craft hadnt broken up during the 10-G braking maneuver, that the parachute had deployed, that a landing site was found by the ground-facing radar, that the powered descent and sky crane had commenced and, at last, finally that the rover had safely touched down on the surface.

Image Credits: NASA

Cheering but, in accordance with COVID-19 precautions not (as they normally would) hugging each other, the team celebrated the landing and soon were treated to the first images sent back from the rover.

These initial pictures are low-quality ones sent just seconds after landing by the hazard camera, a fisheye used for navigation. As the dust settles (literally) and the rover initiates its more powerful devices and cameras, well have new, color images probably within an hour or two.

For a more complete look at the mission and its remarkable landing method, you can read yesterdays profile of the Perseverance mission. The next few days will probably be less exciting than the terror-inducing landing, but soon the rover will be up and running around Jezero, looking for evidence of life on Mars and testing technology that could be used by human visitors in the future.

Were not ready to go there with astronauts yet, but the robots are ready, said JPL director Michael Watkins on the broadcast. We start by sending, you know, our eyes and arms there in the form of a robot. It is just fantastic to be able to do that, and to learn from each rover, learn from the science and the engineering, and make the next one better, and make more and more discoveries. Every time we do one of these missions, we make fabulous discoveries and you know, each one is more exciting than the last.

Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The exciting thing everyone is looking forward to, Mars helicopter Ingenuity, will hopefully take flight soon as well.

We have a series of major milestones between now and the first flight. Tomorrow, well turn on the helicopter, and the space station could confirm its health. The next major milestone will be when the rover deploys the helicopter on the surface, and that marks the first moment that Ingenuity operates on its own in a standalone manner, said MiMi Aung, project manager and engineering lead for Ingenuity. Surviving that first cold frigid night of Mars will be a major milestone, then well execute a series of checkouts, and then we will perform that very important first flight. And if the first flight is successful, we have up to four more flights in the 30 Martian days that we have set aside for our flight experiments.

The helicopter project will definitely be novel, but its not just about recording a first for the sake of NASA being able to say they did it; Ingenuity will hopefully lay a firm technical foundation for future exploration.

A helicopter flying far ahead of rovers and astronauts in the future can provide high-definition reconnaissance information for the rovers and the astronauts before they take long journeys, Aung said. And as importantly, being able to fly will enable us to get to places that we cannot get to with rovers and astronauts, like sides of steep cliffs, deep inside crevices, all areas of high scientific interest. It will be game changing.

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Perseverance lands safely on Mars and sends back its first images of the surface - TechCrunch

NASAs newest robotic explorer has landed safely on Mars after a nearly 300-million-mile journey that began on a Florida launch pad.

The agencysPerseverance rovertouched down on the Red Planet at 3:55 p.m. EST Thursday, bringing an end to the seven minutes of terror that saw a fiery atmospheric entry and parachute-assisted descent. The rovers landing mechanism then firedeight retrorockets to slow down and guide it to a proper landing spot before using nylon cords to lower it onto the surface.

"Touchdown confirmed! Perseverance is safely on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking the signs of past life," exclaimedNASA engineer Swati Mohan.

The first image captured by NASA's Perseverance rover of the surface of Mars after its successful landing on Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021.(Photo: NASA)

All told, the unique landing maneuver successfully decelerated Perseverance from thousands of miles an hour to just 1.7 mph at touchdown. And because ofan 11-minute delay in transmissions from Earth to Mars, the rover did it all on its own no human input was possible.

Mission managers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California quickly received data from Mars satellites and the rover itself confirming a good touchdown, including the first images from Perseverance: scenes of a desolate, dusty landscape that looks dangerous to humans but full of potential for this scientist-explorer.

"We got it. We're there," JPL Chief Engineer Rob Manning, who has worked on Mars landings for decades,said after landing."This is so exciting and the team is beside themselves. This is so surreal. So much has been riding on this."

Just minutes after the landing, Perseverance continued sending imagesfrom its hazard-detecting navigational cameras.

This photo made available by NASA shows the second image sent by the Perseverance rover showing the surface of Mars, just after landing in the Jezero crater, on Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021.(Photo: NASA via AP)

Manning also confirmed teams knew exactly where the rover landed well ahead of schedule.

"This is a sign that NASA works," Manning said."When we put our arms together and our hands together and our brains together, we can succeed. This is what NASA does and this is what we can do as a country."

NASA officials celebrate as NASA's Mars Perseverance rover landed inside a crater on Feb. 18, 2021, after traveling in space for 204 days. Once the rover lands, it will embark on a two-year mission of searching for ancient microbial life.(Photo: Handout, NASA)

The Red Planet's newcomer now finds itself in Jezero Crater, a region of Mars once believed to harbor a massive lake fed by rivers of running water. The regolith and rocks here will be prime targets for Perseverance's suite of instruments designed to hunt for past or present signs of life.

Live video was made possible by NASA during Perseverance's approach, entry, descent, and landing.

Perseverance is our robotic astrobiologist, and it will be the first rover NASA has sent to Mars with the explicit goal of searching for signs of ancient life, said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASAs Science Mission Directorate.

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Though Perseverance isn't the first rover on Mars the U.S. and other countries have been targeting the Red Planet for decades it's the most advanced and fastest, and it will likely survive longer than its predecessors in this harsh, dustyenvironment.

Unlike older rovers that relied on solar power, for example, Perseverance runs on nuclear power. This is especially important on a planet where massive, global dust storms can render solar panels useless.

"It's the biggest and best rover that we've ever sent to Mars," said NASA's Director of theJet Propulsion Laboratory Mike Watkins. "It can really do amazing things in terms of its own scientific exploration of this habitable environment at Jezero."

NASA expects Perseverance's surface mission to last about one Martian year, or two Earth years.

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover is on the cusp of landing on the Red Planet after a seven-month journey. Here's what happens next. USA TODAY

The 2,200-pound rover, nearly identical though slightly larger than its 2012 Curiosity predecessor, has several suites of onboard instruments that will be used to find, analyze, and store rock samples. A drill on the end of its "arm" is designedto grab core samples, while systems that use X-rays and ultraviolet spectrometers can conduct scientific investigations right there on the surface.

There's some forward-thinking, too: Perseverance can not only store its core samples in tubes and put those in its "body," but it can later remove and scatter them around the surface of Jezero Crater for a yet-to-be-scheduledsample return mission. Though Perseverance is no slouch with its onboard instruments, scientists hope to use their own tools and equipment on samples obtained directly from Mars.

Manasvi Lingam, a professor of astrobiology, aerospace, physics and space sciences at Florida Tech, said bringing samples back to Earth hastwo advantages for scientists: the breadth and number of instruments available on Earth vastly outclass whats available on Perseverance; and despite technological advances, having a human eye looking at samples is still the preferred method.

Any sign of life will of course be one of the most momentous discoveries in the entire history of humanity, Lingam said. Even if it is extinct life, just knowing that there was something out there is certainly Nobel Prize-level.

Nicknamed "Percy" by her Jet Propulsion Laboratory mission managers, NASA's latest rover isn't alone in Jezero Crater. A small, 4-pound helicopter named Ingenuity hitched a ride down to the surface on the rover's "belly."

Ingenuity's mission is simple and unrelated to the larger science objectives: conduct the first-ever flight on another world. To accomplish this in an atmosphere just 1% as dense as Earth's, NASA had to build a small vehicle with large carbon fiber blades and make it light enough to lift off.

Using two cameras, the small helicopter will attempt the first test flights over a yet-to-be-determined 30-day period.Ingenuity could offer robotic and human explorers of the future a critical high-level view of the planet.

Perseverance began its journey to Mars in July 2020 on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, which vaulted the payload on a complicated trajectory from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

"We or our heritage rockets have done every U.S. mission to Mars, so it's something that's really special to us," Tory Bruno, CEO of ULA, told Florida Today, part of the USA TODAY Network. "We're really excited and honored to be trusted with a mission like this to Mars."

NASAs newest rover landed safely on Mars after a nearly 300 million-mile journey that began on a Florida launch pad. USA TODAY

Bruno said all missions are important, but science-focused ones like Perseverance have a special place in his company, which is focused on its next-generation Vulcan Centaur rocket for flights of all types.

"The missions we launch are always important," Bruno said. "This is some group of people's life's work. The research they have done leading up to this and the work on the spacecraft itself is a career all alone."

"If you lose that spacecraft or you don't deliver it the way it needs to be delivered in order for it to do its mission, sometimes there's no recovering from that. Their whole career culminated in this mission and they don't have a second career to do another one," Bruno said.

"We take that very, very seriously."

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Contributing: Jay Cannon, USA TODAY

Follow reporter Emre Kelly on Twitter:@EmreKelly

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Perseverance rover successfully lands on Mars, a key step in NASAs search for signs of life - USA TODAY

Just minutes after NASA's Perseverance rover stuck its landing on Mars, it sent back two historic images our first-ever views of the red planet from the elusive Jezero Crater.

Percy, as the rover is nicknamed, got through the "seven minutes of terror" on Thursday a series of make-or-break events to land. A successful landing was announced just before 4 p.m. ET from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California.

"Touchdown confirmed! Perseverance is safely on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking the signs of past life!" Swati Mohan, a guidance, navigation and control officer monitoring telemetry at JPL, called out as the rover landed. Socially-distanced flight engineers burst into cheers and applause as they breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Just moments later, scientists received the rover's first two pictures, showing a rocky view of the rover's new home.

One of the rover's Hazard Avoidance Cameras, which primarily help with driving, snapped the black-and-white shots. The camera is partially obscured by a clear protective cover. Later images from the rover will be higher-resolution.

Percy itself can also be seen in the first image its large shadow announcing its arrival.

The photos mark one of the rover's first successes, and show the team on Earth that it made it to Mars safely.

"Hello, world. My first look at my forever home," the rovertweeted upon arrival.

President Joe Biden watched the rover landing live from the White House.

"Congratulations to NASA and everyone whose hard work made Perseverance's historic landing possible," he tweeted. "Today proved once again that with the power of science and American ingenuity, nothing is beyond the realm of possibility."

Scientists said they hope to view "pretty spectacular" video and audio footage, as well as additional photos, within the next few days.

The rover, NASA's most sophisticated to date, will soon begin its hunt for signs of ancient life. Billions of years ago, the Jezero Crater was home to a large lake, and Percy will collect samples that will be the first to make the trek back to Earth for scientists to examine.

During the first month, they also plan to test a small 4.5-pound, $80 millionhelicopter named Ingenuity. It will attempt the first powered flight in the thin Martian air, a "Wright brothers' moment" on another world.

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NASA reveals first two photos of Mars taken by the Perseverance rover - CBS News