Mars rover Perseverance takes first spin on surface of red planet

[rooster59]

Mars rover Perseverance takes first spin on surface of red planet

By Steve Gorman

 

FILE PHOTO: A portion of a panorama made up of individual images taken by the Navigation Cameras, or Navcams, aboard NASA's Perseverance Mars rover shows the Martian landscape February 20, 2021. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout via REUTERS

 

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - NASA's Mars rover Perseverance has taken its first, short drive on the surface of the red planet, two weeks after the robot science lab's picture-perfect touchdown on the floor of a massive crater, mission managers said on Friday.

 

The six-wheeled, car-sized astrobiology probe put a total of 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) on its odometer on Thursday during a half-hour test spin within Jezero Crater, site of an ancient, long-vanished lake bed and river delta on Mars.

 

Taking directions from mission managers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles, the rover rolled 4 meters (13.1 feet) forward, turned about 150 degrees to its left and then drove backward another 2.5 meters (8.2 feet).

 

"It went incredibly well," Anais Zarifian, a JPL mobility test engineer for Perseverance, said during a teleconference briefing with reporters, calling it a "huge milestone" for the mission.

 

NASA displayed a photo taken by the rover showing the wheel tread marks left in the reddish, sandy Martian soil after its first drive.

 

Another vivid image of the surrounding landscape shows a rugged, ruddy terrain littered with large, dark boulders in the foreground and a tall outcropping of rocky, layered deposits in the distance - marking the edge of the river delta.

 

Some additional, short-distance test driving is planned for Friday. Perseverance is capable of averaging 200 meters of driving per day.

 

But JPL engineers still have additional equipment checks to run on the rover's many instruments before they will be ready to send the robot on a more ambitious journey as part of its primary mission to search for traces of fossilized microbial life.

 

So far, Perseverance and its hardware, including its main robot arm, appear to be operating flawlessly, said Robert Hogg, deputy mission manager. The team has yet to conduct post-landing tests of the rover's sophisticated system to drill and collect rock samples for return to Earth via future Mars missions.

 

NASA announced it has named the site of Perseverance's Feb. 18 touchdown as the "Octavia E. Butler Landing," in honor of the award-winning American science-fiction writer. Butler, a native of Pasadena, California, died in 2006 at age 58.

 

(Reporting by Steve Gorman, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2021-03-06

 

- Whatever you're going through, the Samaritans are here for you

- Follow Thaivisa on LINE for breaking COVID-19 updates

[daveAustin]

Awesome achievement. Most people think this baby is radio-controlled sized. 

[Tug]

Edge of the RIVER delta?!?! Holey cow is that a miss print or miss quote?regardless incredible ,I’ve seen images captured by the helicopter drone absolutely stunning very very cool what an exciting time to be alive!

[Kerryd]

7 hours ago, Tug said:

Edge of the RIVER delta?!?! Holey cow is that a miss print or miss quote?regardless incredible ,I’ve seen images captured by the helicopter drone absolutely stunning very very cool what an exciting time to be alive!

It is thought that at one time Mars had a lot of water. Something happened to the atmosphere (maybe as a result of some angry, 16 y.o. Martian girl who thought climate change was all caused by Martians from the previous generation) and the water disappeared, along with Mar's atmosphere.

But they can see where a lot of that water used to be. Dried up lakes, streams and river deltas on Mars look just like dried up lakes, streams and river deltas on Earth after all. 

That is why they sent this rover to that location. They think it is the most likely site to find any signs that there may have been "life" on Mars at one time. (No, they don't expect to find skeletal remains of "gray aliens" next to their saucer shaped space ships.)

But they may find signs of microorganisms, similar (or the same even) as existed on Earth billions of years ago. That would be a huge discovery because if similar "life" was found on 2 planets in the same solar system, the odds of finding similar "life" on other planets in the galaxy just took a dramatic jump. 

They have already identified what they think are "M" class planets that may be in similar orbits (i.e. in the "Goldilocks Zone") around stars in other solar systems. While those solar systems are too far away for us to visit now, who knows where we'll be in a hundred years from now.

When you consider that just a hundred years ago most aircraft in the world were still biplanes (Monoplane designs started replacing biplanes in the late 1920s/early 1930s).
We've come a huge way since then ! The phone in your hand has more computer power (and memory) than all the computers used to put the first man on the moon ! And that was just over 60 years ago.

It is conceivable that with the way technology is advancing, we could develop propulsion methods that would make it feasible to travel to the nearest neighbouring solar systems and that tech may happen in our lifetimes (well, for some of us) but more probably in the next generation's lifetime.

[hotchilli]

10 hours ago, rooster59 said:

NASA's Mars rover Perseverance has taken its first, short drive on the surface of the red planet, two weeks after the robot science lab's picture-perfect touchdown on the floor of a massive crater, mission managers said on Friday

How's the Thai moon shot going?

[Justgrazing]

18 hours ago, rooster59 said:

 

"It went incredibly well," Anais Zarifian, a JPL mobility test engineer for Perseverance, said during a teleconference briefing with reporters,

 

though we haven't tested the nitrous oxide performance pack yet .. 

Joking aside a quite stunning achievement .. 

[daveAustin]

14 hours ago, Kerryd said:

It is thought that at one time Mars had a lot of water. Something happened to the atmosphere (maybe as a result of some angry, 16 y.o. Martian girl who thought climate change was all caused by Martians from the previous generation) and the water disappeared, along with Mar's atmosphere.

But they can see where a lot of that water used to be. Dried up lakes, streams and river deltas on Mars look just like dried up lakes, streams and river deltas on Earth after all. 

That is why they sent this rover to that location. They think it is the most likely site to find any signs that there may have been "life" on Mars at one time. (No, they don't expect to find skeletal remains of "gray aliens" next to their saucer shaped space ships.)

But they may find signs of microorganisms, similar (or the same even) as existed on Earth billions of years ago. That would be a huge discovery because if similar "life" was found on 2 planets in the same solar system, the odds of finding similar "life" on other planets in the galaxy just took a dramatic jump. 

They have already identified what they think are "M" class planets that may be in similar orbits (i.e. in the "Goldilocks Zone") around stars in other solar systems. While those solar systems are too far away for us to visit now, who knows where we'll be in a hundred years from now.

When you consider that just a hundred years ago most aircraft in the world were still biplanes (Monoplane designs started replacing biplanes in the late 1920s/early 1930s).
We've come a huge way since then ! The phone in your hand has more computer power (and memory) than all the computers used to put the first man on the moon ! And that was just over 60 years ago.

It is conceivable that with the way technology is advancing, we could develop propulsion methods that would make it feasible to travel to the nearest neighbouring solar systems and that tech may happen in our lifetimes (well, for some of us) but more probably in the next generation's lifetime.

Yes indeedy. Both Mars and Venus could have supported life, and potentially even Mercury at the microbial level (before she got smacked down and lost her atmosphere). As well as being in a good spot, we were just fortunate that circumstance and chance events brought us through the late heavy bombardment and beyond.

[Kerryd]

25 minutes ago, daveAustin said:

Yes indeedy. Both Mars and Venus could have supported life, and potentially even Mercury at the microbial level (before she got smacked down and lost her atmosphere). As well as being in a good spot, we were just fortunate that circumstance and chance events brought us through the late heavy bombardment and beyond.

Personally, looking at the "Goldilocks zone", I'd say there was a remote possibility for life to have evolved on Venus at one point. I'm not sure if Mercury was ever cold enough though. But Venus is on the inner edge of the zone and scientists "think" that it may have had a climate (and atmosphere) similar to Earths up to as recently as 700 million years ago. 
However, volcanic activity lead to build up of CO² in the atmosphere and Venus never evolved any CO² absorbing life (like plants and phytoplankton) so the CO² accumulated to the point where now it comprises 96% of the atmosphere. As a result, the planet's surface temperature averages around 450 degrees, too hot for life (as we know it at least). Though they think there is a possibility of micro-bacterial life in the clouds some 60 kms above the planet's surface.

(Which wouldn't happen on Earth as Earth developed those CO² absorbing organisms early in it's history and they did such a good job, they had the reverse effect on Earth's atmosphere. The more CO² in the atmosphere, the larger the plants grew and the more phytoplankton there was in the oceans (which account for up to 50-75% of our oxygen). Those organisms ended up depleting so much of the CO² that the planet went into an Ice Age. A very long ice age. Where the planet froze over to the equator and the only life left was clustered around some thermal vents in the deep ocean. Until volcanic and tectonic activity released enough CO² into the atmosphere that the planet was able to eventually start warming up again and life was able to start evolving. Again.)

In fact, that has happened something like 7 times in the last 700 million years. And every time it does, most life on the planet dies. Apparently, having CO² in the atmosphere and a warm planet is better for life than having no CO² and the planet freezing completely over. Something that seems to skip right over the heads of a certain segment of society.

Mars however is still close to the outer edge of the zone. I'm not sure it has been "in the zone" long enough for life to have started evolving before it lost it's atmosphere. I think it was something like 9 billion years after Earth's formation before the first (detectable) life evolved (3.7 - 4 billion years ago).

Mars, being further out and much colder for most of that time, would have (presumably) been much slower in it's development. A quick search shows that scientists think Mars lost it's atmosphere (and water) around 3 billion years ago.
Being that far out in the zone, I don't think "life" would have had a chance to start evolving like it did on Earth, before Mars lost it's atmosphere and water. 

They may be able to detect things like certain amino acids and other "building blocks" of life, whose presence would indicate the potential for life to have formed there, had it not lost it's atmosphere. That would probably be enough for them to declare the mission a success.

And I have no doubt they are also looking to see if there are large quantities of valuable minerals that could be harvested (robotically). With the added advantage of no environmentalists or "Na'vi" to deal with.

[simon43]

On 3/6/2021 at 7:02 AM, Tug said:

Edge of the RIVER delta?!?! Holey cow is that a miss print or miss quote?regardless incredible ,I’ve seen images captured by the helicopter drone absolutely stunning very very cool what an exciting time to be alive!

I wasn't aware that the helicopter drone has flown already.  Do you have a link to this news?  Thanks.

[Oldie]

Why do they spend so much time and money for pictures of a desert...? We have enough problems on our planet. 

[Tug]

3 hours ago, simon43 said:

I wasn't aware that the helicopter drone has flown already.  Do you have a link to this news?  Thanks.

U tube has it enjoy