NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover celebrates the surface of the Red Planet looking for evidence of water from the planet’s past and signs of life on ancient Mars, if it ever existed. its ninth Martian rock not far from where it landed in February 2021, announced members of the mission group.
“Sample Rock # 9 is in the bag! (Yes, in the tube, anyway.) My team has been waiting for years to get closer to this river delta and see what it can say about past life on Mars. This sample can only get a one-way ticket back to Earth next time.” on rover’s Twitter account on Friday (July 8). Perseverance has for more than a year been exploring the 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer-wide) Jezero Crater that may have been life on Mars sometime in the ancient past of the planet. Scientists believe that this volcano once served as the home of a lake and a river delta, making it an ideal place to hunt for signs of ancient life or water on Mars. If life were formed on Mars, the fossil record may provide evidence of organic molecules created by fossils.
“The delta is calling and we have to go!” writes Brad Garczynski, who collaborated with students at Purdue University, on NASA’s official Perseverance blog on March 4 as the rover headed towards the river. “If microbial life had existed here in the past, this is one of the best places to look at it, as it is possible that well-drained mud has buried and kept a record of that bacterial activity.”
To help Perseverance look at these ancient landmarks and potential hiding places, a car-sized rover is equipped with 23 different cameras and various instruments, including an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer, a ground radar system, and a SuperCam tool, which throws stones with lasers. and evaluates the resulting chemical vapor formation. A drill is mounted at the end of the robot’s arm, which can travel with five degrees of freedom. Perseverance also holds two internal microphones, allowing the rover to record Mars sounds.
In addition to the many rover rock samples he has collected, Endurance has broken new ground by sending Ingenuity, a robotic helicopter that assists rover by exploring new landscapes and interests. Intelligence has performed 29 successful flight operations to date, a length of 169.5 seconds. If all goes according to plan, the NASA-European Space Agency’s joint campaign for the return of the sample will pull the Perseverance samples back to Earth, possibly by 2033.
For more read: https://www.space.com/nasa-perseverance-mars-rover-9th-rock-sample/
