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Nasa mars rover perseverance landing4/2/2023 ![]() Perseverance will sit still after the landing, peering through transparent dust covers on its cameras to assess its location and erecting its high-gain antenna, used for direct communication to Earth. Today is Sol 0, as one martian day is called. NASA/JPL-Caltechīut first the rover rests. Perseverance's first picture, taken through a transparent lens cap from underneath the rover, shows it avoided hazardous boulders. ![]() ![]() It's a "4-billion-year window into planetary evolution," says Katie Stack Morgan, the mission's deputy project scientist at JPL. Life could have found a niche in delta deposits, ancient shorelines, or hydrothermal springs exposed in the crater wall-all of which the rover should reach in its first 2 years of operation as it climbs up from the crater floor. ![]() Some 3.8 billion years ago, a thicker and warmer martian atmosphere allowed water to flow on the surface: One river penetrated Jezero, creating a delta of sediments and filling the crater nearly to the rim with water. Jezero crater is a great place to look for those clues: It holds a playground of habitable environments. Other minerals could capture the frozen imprint of the martian magnetic field as it failed, which allowed the ancient atmosphere-and, presumably, the warm climate-to escape to space. If the samples make it to Earth a few years after that, researchers will analyze them for signs of life that could be preserved in fossilized microbial mats or, more likely, a lumpy distribution of organic molecules. Perseverance's landing is likely to ensure additional attempts: NASA and the European Space Agency have begun to develop the two multibillion-dollar missions, which could launch in 2026 or 2028, needed to collect the samples gathered by Perseverance. China, whose Tianwen-1 arrived at Mars a week ago, will attempt to put a rover and lander on the surface in several months. The Soviet Union is the first and only other nation to have performed the feat, in 1971, when its Mars 3 lander survived for 2 minutes. The touchdown marks NASA's ninth successful landing on the martian surface out of 10 tries. The news, relayed by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter with an 11-minute delay, was greeted with cheers by those in JPL's control room. The sky crane cut the cords and flew off to crash a safe distance away. Finally, moments before touchdown, the rover deployed its six cleated aluminum wheels. The sky crane, falling at a walking pace, unspooled the rover to the surface with nylon cords. After identifying a safe haven free of dunes and boulders, the rover and its sky crane-a sort of rocket-propelled hovercraft-detached from the parachute. Plunging through the martian atmosphere while experiencing temperatures of up to 1300☌, the rover deployed a parachute as big as a basketball court as it approached its 7-kilometer-wide landing zone, the most precisely targeted of any NASA Mars lander. The rover's descent was as dramatic as it was choreographed. The mission marks the start of a long-standing quest for Mars scientists: to gather rock samples and return them to Earth, where they will be probed for signs of life and clues to the planet's past warm-and-wet climate. The region is informally dubbed "Canyon de Chelly," after a national monument in Navajo tribal lands. (A map in the control room showed spots of safe green swarmed by dangerous red.) "We did successfully find that parking lot, and have a safe rover on the ground," said Allen Chen, head of the rover's landing team at JPL. The rover landed some 2 kilometers southeast of Jezero's fossilized delta, locating a safe flat spot, tilting only 1.2°, and amid a field of hazards. "Perseverance is safely on the surface of Mars!" Soon after, a camera returned the first image, showing dust, rocks, and the shadow of the rover looming over the black-and-white martian surface. "Touchdown confirmed," said Swati Mohan, the JPL engineer narrating the landing attempt. EST, confirmation came back of the rover safely touching its wheels down, resulting in exuberant but socially distanced applause from double-masked engineers at the mission's control room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). NASA's $2.7 billion Perseverance rover has successfully landed in Jezero crater, alighting just 35 meters away from hazardous boulders it had identified during descent.
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