The Perseverance rover continues its odyssey on the red planet. NASA’s rover is rolling and has just arrived at the main objective of its mission: the former mouth of a lake on Mars.
« My trip to the ancient river delta is almost over. With these words posted on Twitter, and via a statement on its site, NASA indicated this Tuesday, April 19, 2022 that the crossing of son rover Perseverance towards the delta, the main objective of its mission to Mars, is almost over. The rover will soon be able to start extracting rocks there and looking for sediments from this ancient pool of water.
As a reminder, the rover steers (almost by itself) for several days towards this delta, that is to say an old mouth which was probably formed by the passage of water, in Jezero Crater. On the pictures transmitted by the rover, we can already see from afar the ” layered rocks, deposited in water, that surely hold secrets regarding what once was their environment », precise @NASAPersevere’s tweet.
A long journey for Perseverance, to get to this delta on Mars
Mars 2020 is a mission of the American space agency, which left the Earth on July 30, 2020. The objective of Perseverance is to help us to reconstruct in an accurate way the history of the planet Mars, by taking samples from it which must return to Earth one day. Over a year ago now, in February 2021, the rover of the mars 2020 Perseverance mission landed on site. To land it smoothly, NASA had used a 21-meter-diameter parachute and 70-meter cables.
Since then, Perseverance has already managed to dethrone the distance records previously held by rovers on Mars, with some 319 meters traveled in one day on the red planet, well ahead of Opportunity and its 219 meters.
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