Nasa’s new generation of rovers, including Perseverance, relied on a rocket platform called a sky crane to lower it on to the Martian surface.
Nasa images from mars rover software#
More than half of the spacecraft sent to Mars have blown up or crashed because of hardware or software mishaps. A second image showed a view from behind the rover of the Jezero crater. It showed the flat, rocky surface of the Jezero crater. Partially obscured by a dust cover, the first picture was a view from one of Percy’s hazard cameras. The site was chosen for its promise of preserving signs of life: it was once home to an ancient lake and river delta that may have collected and buried microbes and locked them within rocks.Ī second round of applause erupted in the control room as the first images of the surface arrived minutes after touchdown. Weighing more than a tonne, it landed nearly in the middle of the landing zone within the 28 mile-wide (45km) Jezero crater north of the planet’s equator. Perseverance – fondly known as Percy – landed with “eyes open” taking images of the surface to choose its landing spot. “Touchdown confirmed! Perseverance safely on the surface of Mars, ready to begin seeking signs of past life,” the flight controller, Swati Mohan, announced at mission control on Thursday to back-slapping, fist-bumping colleagues wearing masks against the coronavirus. The final phase, following a 203-day journey, was described “seven minutes of terror” by engineers. The space agency’s ninth mission to the cold, dry, red planet was steered by a $2.7bn (£2.1bn), car-sized, six-wheeled rover, Perseverance, that streaked across the unforgiving Martian atmosphere to make its intense descent and landing. Nasa scientists present a high-resolution image showing one of the six wheels aboard the Perseverance Mars rover at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
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