NASA's Perseverance rover begins search for life on Mars
Rover Perseverance began the ascent of an ancient delta terrain called the "Hawksbill Gap" on Mars on May 17, according to a NASA publication.
This mission is the primary vital astronomical objective of the Perseverance team, as well as a major milestone for a mission launched to find traces of ancient life on Mars.
NASA's mobile approaching its primary goal
Perseverance will travel upwards with the help of an automated navigation system, as the spacecraft's team meticulously pre-planned its trajectory from Earth, more than 46 million kilometers away.
The rover will collect rock samples and place them in the center of the delta, waiting for a future retrieval mission to bring them back to Earth in the next decade.
"Perseverse's primary astrobiological target is Jezero crater," said Perseverance deputy project supervisor, Katie Stack-Morgan.
Those rocks that we think are most likely to contain signs of ancient life, and may also tell us about the climate of Mars and how it evolved over time.”
The Perseverance rover landed on Mars' Jezero crater on February 18 last year and has since provided us with crucial evidence that Jezero once was a lake, thanks to images of surrounding river deltas.
The rover also helped perform a number of first-ever operations, including the first ever maneuverable flight over the surface of Mars, thanks to the rover's attached Ingenuity helicopter.
Exploring the Martian River Delta
Deltas are natural gathering points where river flow deposits large amounts of material, including nutrients.
So the Perseverance team decided to focus on the delta called the Hawksbill Gap, where Perseverance will search for suitable rocks for sampling and use state-of-the-art equipment to analyze the composition of its surroundings, which may help determine if the area was ever habitable. According to the team, we likely won't know the answer until the samples are returned to Earth.
One of the surprising aids to the Perseverance mission is the Ingenuity helicopter, which was supposed to fly five times in total to prove the possibility of drone flight on Mars.
The helicopter served as an air explorer for Perseverance, flying about 30 times. The helicopter is now used to help plan the exact route of the roving by means of images sent to the ground.
Perseverance will return to Jezero Ling to set a new historical precedent once he finishes collecting samples from the Hawksbill delta. Upon his return, he will leave the first set of samples at the bottom of the dry Martian lake , waiting to be collected and returned to Earth .
Source: interestingengineering translation: "I believe science"
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