During a Thursday maneuver to verify the proper operation of the system, a six-wheeled vehicle moved four meters, then turned 150 degrees and struck another 2.5 meters in the opposite direction. Moving back, Perseverance photographed the tracks he had ridden on the Martian surface. His maneuvers lasted 33 minutes.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to look at bike tracks,” Anais Zarifian, an engineer in charge of rover movements at NASA’s Jet Research and Development Center, told a news conference. “Our first maneuvers turned out incredibly well, this is an important stage that our mission has gone through,” Zarifian said.
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In full operation, the rover will be able to cover 200 meters in one Martian day, which is slightly longer than the Earth’s. The explorer is moving five times faster than Curiosity, the previous American vehicle on Mars.
The test drive served as a mobility test, which is just one of many mission milestones – team members check and calibrate every system, subsystem and instrument on Perseverance. “When it comes to wheeled vehicles on other planets, there are few things that are more important than the first ride,” Zarifian said. “This was our first chance to kick it off and go for a ride with Perseverance. The six-wheel drive of the vehicle responded perfectly. We are convinced that our propulsion system is fine, that it can take us where science will take us in the next two years. “
Mission on the red planet
Rover Perseverance landed on Mars on February 18 in Lake Crater. Scientists believe the crater was flooded more than three billion years ago. One of the goals of Perseverance is to collect samples of rocks on site, which will be transported to Earth during the next mission. The samples are then to be used to explore possible former life on the red planet.
At the same time, NASA announced that it finally has a name for the place where Perseverance landed. She named it Octavia E. Butler’s Landing Place – after the famous African-American writer of science fiction novels.
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