![]() ![]() It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, with everybody doing the edges first.” – Pamela Conrad, NASA Astrobiologist “It’s really exciting trying to put together the larger story. And then you figure out where you’re going to go next.” ![]() “It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, with everybody doing the edges first. “It’s really exciting trying to put together the larger story,” says Pamela Conrad, an astrobiologist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. The layers of Martian rocks beneath Perseverance’s wheels bear tales of the planet’s distant past. Although some ice remains on the now-desiccated world, the water and the atmosphere disappeared long ago, likely making it uninhabitable now. Mars once sported lakes and flowing rivers, including one that washed into Jezero. While water would evaporate instantly on today’s Mars, some scientists think that eons ago the planet used to be more like Earth. Once the rover’s ready to explore the Martian environment it landed in, it will trundle around the delta, using its instruments to look for signs of liquid water in the past. They’ll pilot the scrappy rover remotely to explore new environments, probe the geological history, search for signs of alien life, and prepare for future robotic and crewed missions to this mysterious world. Over the next two years, a dedicated team of scientists and engineers will make the most of Perseverance’s presence on the red planet. Perseverance took this image of the tracks it made following its first drive on the Martian surface. Its sidekick, a 4-pound helicopter known as Ingenuity, made its historic first flight in late April, scoping out the wider area and performing reconnaissance before Percy sallies forth. NASA scientists suspect that if fossilized microbes exist on Mars, they could be trapped in clay mineral deposits along the crater’s dried-up lake bottom, shorelines, and river delta.īefore venturing into the alien terrain, the rover performed a series of self-checks to ensure that its seven primary instruments, including a pair of its 23 cameras, were working properly. It’s thought to be the site of an arid, ancient delta, where liquid water once flowed more than 3 billion years ago. “I remember the moment that we landed because everyone started jumping up and down and cheering,” says Mike Hennessy, Science Center educator and manager of its Buhl Planetarium.Īfter the successful landing, Perseverance -or Percy, as it’s sometimes called-sat for a couple of weeks in the middle of Jezero Crater, readying for its missions. Illustration: NASA/JPL-CaltechĬarnegie Science Center hosted a socially distanced landing party with some 40 visitors, including kids dressed up in flight suits, and hundreds more spectators following along virtually. An illustration shows Perseverance making its way toward Mars. ![]()
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