Washington: Nasa’s Mars rover, Perseverance, landed on the Jezero crater on the Red Planet today in a risky mission aimed at finding whether there were life forms that ever existed on the planet.
Several scientists of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration were exuberant about Perseverance’s safe landing at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California after operations lead Swati Mohan confirmed the landing of the rover in the Jezero crater.
After seven months in space, NASA’s Perseverance rover survived a nail-biting landing phase to touch down gently on the surface of Mars, ready to embark on its mission to search for the signs of ancient microbial life.
‘Touchdown confirmed,’ said operations lead Swati Mohan at around 3:55 pm Eastern Time (2055 GMT), as mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena erupted in cheers.
The autonomously guided procedure was completed more than 11 minutes earlier, which is how long it takes for radio signals to return to Earth.
‘Hello, world. My first look at my forever home,’ Nasa’s Perseverance Mars Rover tweeted with images.
This is Nasa’s most advanced rover which the US space agency has sent to another world. “This landing is one of those pivotal moments for NASA, the United States, and space exploration globally – when we know we are on the cusp of discovery and sharpening our pencils, so to speak, to rewrite the textbooks,” the space agency’s administrator Steve Jurczyk said in a statement.
‘WOW!!’ tweeted NASA Associate Administrator Thomas Zurbuchen as he posted Perseverance’s first black and white image from the Jezero Crater in Mars’ northern hemisphere.
Over the course of several years, Perseverance will attempt to collect 30 rock and soil samples in sealed tubes, to be eventually sent back to Earth sometime in the 2030s for lab analysis.
About the size of an SUV, it weighs a ton, is equipped with a seven foot (two meter) long robotic arm, has 19 cameras, two microphones, and a suite of cutting-edge instruments to assist in its scientific goals.
Perseverance is scheduled to carry tests and investigate the rock and sediment of Jezero’s ancient lakebed and Jezero’s river delta to analyse the geology of the region and determine the past climate. The other primary objective of Perseverance is also to find signs of ancient microbial life in Earth’s closest neighbour.