The Mars rover Perseverance of the American space agency NASA has successfully made its first ride over the red planet. Two weeks ago, the vehicle landed at the bottom of a huge crater on Mars.
The six-wheeled vehicle covered a distance of 6.5 meters: 4 meters ahead, and after a sharp left turn 2.5 meters backwards. The test drive took half an hour.
According to NASA, the mission went “incredibly well.” The space agency shared a photo showing the tracks left by the rover in the red, sandy Mars soil. The vehicle can potentially travel 200 meters per day.
Perseverance will be making a number of test drives in the near future. If these have been successfully carried out and the robot’s equipment appears to be in order, the vehicle can begin its main mission on Mars: searching for traces of (microscopic) life.
The vehicle will also pack soil samples. A future mission involving NASA in collaboration with its European counterpart ESA is to collect these packages and bring them back to Earth.
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