NASA’s Perseverance rover is on its way to Mars to identity if the red planet ever had signs of life in it. We humans have always wanted to mark our existence and flourish our species all across the universe.
But we all know that we’re nowhere close to making it possible. We are several years behind and our science is not that well-developed.
But on the flip side, we have made so much progress over the last decade than mankind has ever done in the last century.
And now more than ever, we have a chance at extending our stay here. Let’s see how NASA’s Perseverance rover is bringing us one step closer.
The Surprises It Had During The Launch
The rover had its launch at 7:50 AM from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station using an Atlas 5 rocket. It’s currently on a 7-month long trajectory to Mars and it will have to make a quick stop in the middle.
The rover will land on a 45 km wide crater named Jezero somewhere in February 2021. During the launch, NASA’s jet lab experienced a sudden earthquake that could’ve stopped the mission.
But fortunately, the launch was in no way affected by this. Alex and Vaneeza are kids just who are just doing their 7th and 11th grades respectively.
As an interesting side note, these kids named the rover and the helicopter that’s attached to it, and they were also present during the launch.
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Had A Rough Launch
Launching a rocket into space is usually a result of several months, if not years of hard work and research.
The people who work for it usually consider several scenarios while laying out a launch plan. But even then, there are a few things which can go wrong and sometimes result in a devastating outcome.
The Perseverance rover is the crown jewel of this $2.7 billion mission and to everyone’s surprise, it went into what’s called a “safe mode”.
The scientists who work there have said that this is because a portion of the rocket body got alarmingly cold while entering into space.
They’ve also added that the situation is now resolved and the temperature is now normal.
The Most Important Mission
The rover and its helicopter assistant is fully ready to perform a mission on a scale that no rover on Mars ever did before.
Yes! Our little rover is all set to hunt signs of life that could’ve once existed and thrived on the red planet.
The Viking landers already did their share of work back in the ‘80s and produced some pretty drastic outputs that are baffling theorists even today.
Following this, NASA employed various rovers and used their “follow the river” strategy which gave us some pretty promising results as well.
We have enough evidence on hand to pursue the subject and this time with NASA’s Perseverance Rover we might have a chance in bringing it to a conclusion.
The Prognosis Of The Mission
As the rover lands on the crater, it will continue to scan its surface for about one Mars year which equals two years here on earth.
It will look for, collect, and preserve samples of micro-remains that ancient creatures on Mars could’ve left behind.
But the mission doesn’t end there as the only way we can know for sure, is if we can hold it in our hands for ourselves right?
That’s exactly why somewhere around early 2031, we’ll recover these collected samples and bring them back to earth.
These will be the first clear and accurate samples of the red planet that humans will ever get their hands on.
Conclusion
The good news doesn’t stop there as our little “ingenuity” drone has a whole new set of missions to carry out.
It has a really powerful radar scanning system that can scan the surface of the planet and look for subsurface water, ice, etc.,
Needless to say, that it’s also the first earth-owned flying machine that has flown over the surface of another planet.
The post isn’t long enough to cover everything that our little machines are up to. But this is an important step to us in making Mars our new home.
